The Memoirs of a Lonesome Vampire
by Fatal-Breath
Summary: Godric's memories of his life, mostly after the creation of Eric but with some flashbacks to previous points in his life.
1. Chapter 1

**The Memoirs of a Lonesome Vampire**

**Chapter One:**

"Watch your weight."

He'd say the exact same thing every time we went out to hunt.

"You can control everything else: your breathing, the rustle of your clothes. But never forgot your weight. How you place your weight can make the difference between catching your prey and scaring it off. Between life and death. Remember: always watch your weight."

He'd say this with his deep, rough voice. My father.

Once, to prove the importance of this lesson for survival, my father forced me out onto a frozen lake. The ice was quite thin.

"Keep an eye on where and how you put your feet, boy," my father growled. "One wrong step and you're through the ice."

He stood on the shore, watching me. Waiting for me to move. I took a step. The ice creaked, but did not crack. I took another step. Then another, and another. When I had made it out far enough, I turned to my father to show him my success. The ice split, and I fell through.

My father had to come out and get me. Despite being twice my weight, he managed to reach me without any cracking. He fished me out and carried me back to shore.

"Don't get cocky," he said as he put me down on the ground. "That's when you stop being careful, and make mistakes."

I coughed up some water and took a deep breath. "But father," I protested, "I'm not going to be hunting on the ice. Why did you make me do this thing?"

He looked at me hard with his keen dark eyes. "It's not just about hunting, son. It's about life. You should always look before you take a step. If you don't, you're liable to end up some place you won't like." He took off his mantle and handed it to me, before heading back to our home.

It was a lesson I never forgot.

* * *

I watched my prey from high above him. He was absolutely magnificent; even though he was outnumbered by foes, he never once thought of giving up. His white fur coat was matted with red blood as he whirled to defend himself against an attack. I could smell the blood from where I was perched, observing. As he spun to face the attacker, a guttural noise poured from his mouth. He charged and ripped open the attacker, then quickly turned towards another. After a short but furious skirmish, there was only one opponent left. My prey paused, white mist rising from his panting jaws, and then pressed an attack. But he was too bold. As he rushed forward, the other managed to swipe him, slicing his gut. My prey stumbled, but got back up. He pushed again, and this time managed to kill his enemy. Then he too went down. He was losing a lot of blood.

I was deciding upon whether to go down and see him when his fellow creatures came to him. They had been forced apart when others of the enemy had ambushed them. They didn't see how bravely my prey had fought, only the seriousness of his wound. They surrounded him and lifted him up, all the while keeping an eye out for potential enemy traps. Strange creatures, humans were. They would risk their own lives to protect their wounded, rather than simply leaving him to be devoured by the enemy.

As I sat in a tree above them, I tried to remember what it was like being human, but I couldn't. It had been over a thousand years since then, a thousand years of hunting and feeding on humans. When you look at humans as nothing but cattle, your own humanity slowly begins to erode. Mine had had a thousand years to crumble into dust. There was nothing left.

As the men moved I followed them, traversing the tree tops as they picked a path through the corpses scattered on the ground. I felt like some dark bird of prey, circling and waiting for the exact moment when I could swoop down and partake in a long-awaited meal. The allegory wasn't very far from the truth, however. The men continued on and I followed, shadowing their movements. The wounded one, the one I hunted, was giving the men a difficult time. Though they were all large he was larger still, being nearly a foot taller than me I estimated, and this made him hard to carry. One man had his shoulders and the other his legs, and his blood-drenched wolf pelt grazed the ground as they walked, catching twigs, leaves, dismembered limbs, and dirt. The wounded one's eyes suddenly flickered open, and for a moment I believe he saw me. I could see the widening of his eyes, hear the quiet gasp of breath as he tried to comprehend what indeed it was he was seeing. Perhaps he assumed I was a hallucination brought on by approaching death, or maybe he no longer cared to find out what I was, but soon his eyes closed and sleep took him over. As I followed, I briefly wondered why I didn't simply fall from the trees and kill all the men then and there. The only answer I had was that the wounded man fascinated me. He had no fear of pain or death while he fought. All he felt was glory: glory that he was bigger, faster, stronger, smarter; glory that he could fight for his people better than any other; glory that he lived while others died. I had felt glory once, long ago. I no longer did; nothing I did was glorious, only devious and sinister. It was strange that this wounded man, this lone blonde wolf, was making me dwell upon things I had done and lost in my long life. He truly was fascinating.

For perhaps two hours the men carried him along. They would switch his position and sometimes try to get him to walk himself, leaning on them for support. It was very slow-going. I had stopped shadowing them but I continued to observe where they were heading. As I watched, I felt a familiar tug in my chest, a warning to seek shelter and darkness. The sun was rising, and I was far from my safe location. Panic gripped me and, with one last look at the three men, I dropped from the trees and fled from the coming sun.

* * *

The very next night I awoke with vague resemblance of excitement. I was determined to track down where my prey and his men had gone and to see whether or not he was still alive.

It was very easy to hunt them. Their scent filled my nostrils as I raced through the forest. They smelled of pain, exhaustion, hunger, anger, and blood. Most of all blood. My fangs protruded from my upper teeth as I came nearer to their resting spot.

My blonde wolf was lying on a pyre, but he was still alive, though just barely; I could hear his heart beating faintly in the night air. There were torches set around him, which I assumed were for providing light as well as to cremate him once his time had come. One of his companions was talking to him; I paid no attention to what he said. The other was keeping watch, his eyes peeled to the darkness for any sign of movement. Pity for him that if he did see anything it would be too late for him, for all of them.

I ran my tongue over my fangs as I crouched in the shadows, hiding from the light of the fires. My hunger pounded through my dead veins, and I could hardly restrain myself from slaughtering them all instantly. I wanted to wait and watch a bit more.

The wounded man groaned on the pyre. He convulsed with pain, and the companion who had been talking to him before was now trying to soothe him, to take his mind off the pain. The wounded one settled, and for a few moments all was quiet except for the crackling of the torches. His eyes were barely open, and I could smell that death would take him soon. His companion seemed to notice this as well.

"All will be well," the companion told the wounded one. "Don't be afraid."

"I'm not afraid." The wounded one's voice was very weak and raspy. His strength, which had killed so many enemies the day before, had all but abandoned him. I felt almost sorry for him. "I'm pissed off."

That made me laugh. But I was too hungry to wait any longer to hear what else he might have to say. I stood up, and a twig broke beneath my feet.

The other man, the one who was keeping watch, pulled out his sword. The metallic ring was loud in the quiet night. "Who's there?" he shouted. "Show yourself."

Well, I simply couldn't resist such a polite request. I tore out of the woods, straight at them, too fast for them to see who or what I was. Instead of savouring their deaths, I killed them quickly. They weren't who I wanted.

I jumped up onto the pyre where my blonde wolf lay. He didn't even flinch when I suddenly appeared, he was so weak. I looked down at him, studying him. His eyes opened only a sliver as he turned to me, and then he whispered to me:

"Are you Death?"

That seemed rather appropriate. I did look like some savage demon, with wet blood dripping down my face and onto my chest. "I am," I responded.

"But you're just a little boy."

"I'm not." I tried not to sound too amused by his observation. I had become a vampire when I was only fifteen, so I did look like a little boy.

He looked around him. "My men..."

"Dead."

"You swine."

I smiled at him, but it wasn't a happy smile. He was right. "I watched you on the battlefield last night," I went on. "I never saw anyone fight like you."

"I would fight you now if I could."

What a curious man, I thought, to dare me to fight him; me, who he could not even hope to beat had he been at his full strength. I laughed at the absurdity of his comment, my fangs glistening wetly in the moonlight. "I know," I chuckled. "It's beautiful."

He stared at me for a moment, then softly said, "What are you waiting for? Kill me."

I was about to oblige him when a thought occurred to me, one I had never considered before. I shifted closer to him, crouching on the balls of my feet. "Could you be a companion of Death?" I asked him. "Could you walk with me through the world...through the dark? I'll teach you all I know. I'll be your father, your brother, your child." I waited mutely for his response.

He looked at me with his bright blue eyes that were clouded with approaching death. His dry lips moved, but where I had expected a rebuke instead came a question:

"What's in it for me?" The sheer insolence of this man was unbelievable, but it made me undeniably happy. This was a man who could make my monotonous existence a bit more interesting, and that alone was of great value to me. And to attach him to me, I knew I had to persuade him with something that was of great value to him.

I watched his face as I told him exactly what I would give him. "What you love most: life."

"Life," he sighed, with obvious desire.

I could wait no longer. I struck, tearing into his throat with my fangs. He groaned underneath me as he felt his life leaving his veins. I drained him, absorbed all that he was into me, until his heart nearly stopped. I pulled my fangs from his neck and plunged them into my wrist, opening a large gash over which I forced his mouth. He could scarcely swallow, but swallow he did, until he was clutching my wrist to him and pulling at my blood. When I figured he'd had enough, I pried my arm away. As soon as I did this, he collapsed. Slight dread filled me, a fear that I'd gotten the process wrong. But something inside of me told me to wait; that I should bury him with me before the sun rose, and see what tomorrow night would bring. I bent over and picked him up, swinging him around my shoulders. I looked at the sky to see how much time was left until dawn: I still had a few hours.

Without further ado I marched, with my deadweight prize, back to my safe location, and buried him with me to await the next night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: my information about vampires in Norse mythology comes from Wikipedia ("Draugr", Wikipedia), so I'm not sure how reliable it is. My information on Pictish culture comes from Phyllis J. Goodall's "The Problem of the Picts" Recumbent Stone Circles in Grampian, and again I am not certain about its reliability. I apologize for any incorrect information.

**Chapter Two:**

"_Watch your weight."_

I awoke with a gasp and dirt spilled into my mouth. I didn't know where I was, only that I was underground and there was a body next to me. Panic flooded me, and I frantically scrabbled at the dirt, trying to dig myself out. That hollow, eerie voice still echoed in my head, but I was too afraid to listen to it.

As a rule, vampires do not dream. We are the undead, and once the sun comes up we are truly dead, and the dead can't dream. I wasn't sure if the voice was part of a dream, or something else entirely, but it scared me.

I finally got myself out of the hole in the ground and I spilled onto the leaves and debris above, spitting soil out of my mouth. Once I had calmed down, I crawled closer to the hole to see what dead body had been down there with me. It was hard to tell, since it was almost completely covered with dirt, but then it twitched. Not dead then. Alive. The body moved again, and it tried to claw its way up out of the ground. The dirt fell from its hair, and I remembered who it was. It was my blonde wolf, my prey, whom I had decided to change rather than kill. I grabbed his arm and hauled him up.

Once the blonde one was above ground he jerked his arm from my grasp and stepped away from me. His eyes, which had only a night ago been filled with impending death, were now bright and glowing in the dark. And wary, very wary, especially of me.

"What is going on?" His voice quavered with emotion as he continued to back away. "What is this?"

I held up my hands to show him I was unarmed, though I didn't need weapons to kill. But that was beside the point: I wanted to calm him down. "Hush," I crooned. "It's all right. I'm not here to hurt you."

"Who are you?" he demanded aggressively.

I took a cautious step towards him but he backed away instantly. I stopped. "I am your friend. I am here to help you."

He choked back a bitter laugh. "Help me? Help me how? I was in a bloody hole!" He had stopped moving away from me.

"You have changed, and you are going to be experiencing some things you've never felt before."

"You," he whispered, his memories from yesterday coming back to him. "Last night, it was you."

I nodded.

"You are Death. You killed me. I felt it. But I'm alive..." he trailed off. He lifted a hand to his neck and felt the skin where my teeth had pierced; it was as smooth as it had been before. His hand fell away.

"What is going on?" he asked me very seriously.

I shrugged my shoulders and turned away from him. "I did kill you," I told him.

"But I'm not dead."

I shook my head. "No, you are not dead. But nor are you alive, either. I brought you back."

"Back?"

"Yes. I drank your blood, and then gave you mine." I looked over my shoulder at him. A quizzical line creased his forehead as he stared at me. "You are the undead, like me," I stated simply.

He covered his ears with quivering hands, like he refused to hear what I was saying. He sank to the ground and then looked down at his chest, at his arms, his legs, everything, then up at me again. "But I don't look any different, and I don't feel any different."

I walked over and sat by him, close but not close enough to make him too nervous. "You will," I said sadly. "Soon you will feel very different. I believe your shock and disbelief are hiding your...urges right now, but once they are gone you will realize just how different you really are."

"This has got to be some sort of joke," he muttered. His gaze wandered aimlessly around his surroundings. We were in a sparse forest of deciduous trees nearly bare of leaves. Autumn was almost over, and the bite of winter was beginning to settle in. We were sitting in a sort of hollow and at the farthest end from us, in front of a vertical rock face that housed a small cave, was the hole where he and I had been buried. He avoided looking at that spot as much as he could. I think it frightened him, the idea that he had been buried alive there. Well, not so alive, but even so, waking up while lying underground with the weight of soil above you was a sensation that took a long time to get used to.

This was my safe place, and I had managed to get him back here well before the sun rose; and while I was digging his grave, so to speak, I had considered maybe finding a new place to take shelter. This place was good enough for me, but for a new vampire perhaps it might be a bit too isolated. He wouldn't be able to control his cravings as well as I could, and we were far from any human habitation. It would drive him mad, having the thirst but not being able to slake it. It would be a good idea, then, to move soon.

I got up and grabbed a few wooden sticks that I had gathered at an earlier point. I placed them into the fire pit I had constructed, struck a rock and flint together that I had found amongst the dead men the night before, and after a few moments a fire crackled in its hearth. I sat back down, across the fire from my blonde wolf. He needed a name, I decided. Should I name him, or let him choose?

The blonde one unconsciously shifted closer to the fire. There was something about a bright fire that made you feel more secure at night, and right now he was feeling very alone and troubled.

"Who are you?" he asked me for the second time, though he was much quieter this time.

I stared into the dancing flames as I thought of how to frame my answer. "You were right to call me Death," I told him after a long silence. "I am Death. I bring death wherever I go. It is unavoidable."

He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, then rested his head on his arms, watching me over the burning blaze. "You didn't kill me, though. You saved my life."

I laughed quietly. He _really_ _hadn't_ believed anything I had told him so far. He still thought he was human. "Yes, in a way I did. Though I doubt it is the kind of life you would have wanted."

"Any kind of life is good."

"Do not say that too quickly. You have yet to experience this life."

A wolf howled in the cold night. We both stopped talking and listened.

"What kind of life is this, then?" he asked me after.

I sighed. "An eternity of blood and pain, and surrounded by death. A very, very long, lonely, monotonous existence. While it does have its moments, overall this life will be very...boring, I fear."

"Then why did you give it to me? You talk like my life, as it has been so far, will no longer exist for me."

I had been trying to figure out why I had made him, myself. "I think I did so because I _was_ bored. The nights started blending together in an endless routine of hunting, feeding, and sleeping. That's all there was to my life for many, many years. I was hunting you the same way I had hunted thousands before. I was going to kill you as I had killed them. But when I saw you, I could almost taste your vivacity, your love of life, it was so strong in you. That simple joy in living was something I hadn't seen before in such abundance. You interested me, and I when I saw you were dying I thought that your desire for life would persuade you to join with me, and perhaps it would brighten my otherwise dull existence. And as for your old life, it is now redundant. You are no longer who you were, and you cannot go back."

He had sat up straight during the middle of my explanation. Something I said had caught his attention, and though the last part, about him not being allowed to go back to his old life, made him frown, he chose to ignore it for now. "You speak as if you are very old, but you cannot be more than sixteen."

I smiled gently at him, because I knew that this would be very hard for him to grasp. "I was fifteen when I died." I paused. "For the past thousand years I have remained a fifteen-year-old boy."

His eyebrows darted upwards, and then he began to laugh. "That's good," he managed to say between bouts of laughter. "That's good. You are very compelling. This is a very convincing joke."

I did not laugh with him. "I am not joking," I said bluntly. His mirth began to subside. "This is no joke. This is the absolute truth. I am over a thousand years old. I was a Pict, one of the 'painted people' as the Romans had named us, for our tattoos. These tattoos," I pointed to the ink on my chest, arms, and back, "were given to me by my people. I was born only a handful of decades after the assassination of the man named Gaius Julius Caesar." I could see he did not accept what I was saying, but in time he would understand.

"It's impossible," he said under his breath, but I still heard him.

"Not impossible," I responded, "just unlikely."

"So what would that make you then?"

I was waiting for this question. "What do you think I am?"

He didn't reply.

I leaned forward, and I looked him directly in the eyes as I said, "I am, as you are, a vampire."

"Vampire!"

"So you _have_ heard of us?"

He stumbled to his feet, shock evident in his body language. "In myths and folktales. They are stories told by parents to frighten children, nothing more."

"I am afraid that is quite untrue." I remained sitting on the ground. "I am a vampire, and now you are as well."

"These are all lies," he yelled angrily. "Lies and tall tales, told by a madman." He turned to walk away from me. I got up and flashed past him, to stand in front of him. His eyes widened in surprise and fear.

"This isn't a lie, and it isn't a joke," I said coldly. "These are all truths, about what I am and what you are. You must believe me."

He tried to walk around me. "I refuse to believe such things. Now let me pass: I am going home."

I grabbed him and threw him to the ground, pouncing on him and holding him down. My fangs slid out. "You know I am telling the truth. You felt it last night, when I drank your blood and then you drank mine. You saw me for what I was."

When I flung him down, the anger he felt towards me had inadvertently forced his fangs to come out. I reached forward and touched one of them with my finger. "Now you will see yourself for what you are."

His hands went to his mouth, and when he felt the razor sharpness of his own fangs he began to tremble. He pushed me off of him and went towards the bucket of water I had used last night to wash the blood of his dead companions off me. Though the water was red, he could still see his reflection. A quiet wail forced itself out of his throat.

"No!" He knocked over the bucket and spun to me. His lips were pulled apart in a snarl. "What have you done to me?" he roared. I watched all this in a detached manner, as you would a fly on the wall: you saw it, but didn't really notice that it was there. He rushed towards me and seized me by the shoulders and shook me. "What!" he demanded.

"I gave you exactly what you wanted," I answered levelly. I grabbed his fingers and slowly pried them out of my flesh. He winced in pain as I bent them back further than they were meant to go. "I offered you a choice, and you chose life."

"But not this life!"

"Well, then it would have been death. Complete, final, irreversible death. Do you want to die? Because I can still kill you if you wish it."

The blonde one took back his hands, and his head drooped. I waited for him to reply and went back to sitting by the fire. He stayed where he was.

Minutes passed. I had stopped expecting him to answer, but at long last he did. "No," he breathed. "No, I want to live."

I peered up at him. His anger seemed to have flowed out of him, and now he was an empty, living corpse. His energy was gone. I hoped it would come back soon, or all my work would've been for nothing. "Come," I said, motioning for him to join me by the fire. "Come sit. We will talk."

He walked lethargically over and collapsed to the ground.

"What do you know about vampires?" I asked.

"Draugr," he spat, "is what we call them. They are evil, wicked, undead creatures who rise from the graves of dead men to prey on the flesh and blood of the living; greedy men who are so worried about their wealth that they will come back from the dead to protect it. They have magical powers that allow them to change shape and see the future, and can drive men and animals insane simply with their presence. They are virtually unconquerable, have superhuman strength, and they can also swell to great sizes and crush their victims."

I was laughing quite loudly by the end of his description.

"What?" he demanded.

"That is what you believe?"

"It's what my people believe. Is it wrong?"

"Quite so."

If I had known him better, I would say he was sulking. But I didn't know him, so I couldn't say. "Vampires are the undead, that much is true. We do survive on the blood of humans, and some vampires do seem to have certain powers, but I've yet to find a vampire who can read the future or is able to shape-shift. Mostly it's that they can fly, which I can do, or they can communicate through their minds with other vampires that are connected to them by blood, or they have a very strong sense of smell and make excellent trackers. Powers like that. We are not strictly greedy men, though there are a number of them, and we cannot grow to an enormous size and...crush people!" I snorted noisily. "Sorry, I do not mean to be rude." I cleared my throat. "We do have superhuman strength and speed, and while we are difficult to kill, it is not impossible. The sun, fire, decapitation, a wooden stake to the heart, all are good ways to kill a vampire. Silver hurts us, and if you lose a limb it is unlikely to grow back. We bleed when we are cut, but we heal much faster than a human. And I'm sure there are a few vampires who could drive humans insane with their presence." I chuckled, but stopped quickly.

His face, already white, had become whiter still. "We must kill humans to survive?"

"I did not say kill, but that is the general idea, yes. Why?" I cocked my head. "It is not so unlike your former life. You were a fighter, were you not? Did you not kill other humans in order to protect your people?"

"Well, yes. But this is somehow..."

"Different?" I supplied. He nodded. "I understand. But you will get used to it."

He held up his hand and motioned for me to say no more. He bit his thumbnail as he tried to digest everything I told him. "Wait," he blurted out. "You said we didn't have to kill. What do you mean?"

"It is possible to drink from a human without killing them." He opened his mouth to say something. "But," I interrupted, "that will be very difficult for you to do in the beginning. You won't be able to help yourself."

He sagged. I was becoming worried that the vigour I had seen in him yesterday had disappeared. I truly hoped it wasn't so. I tried to cheer him up. "Just think of them as your enemies. When you were alive, you had no qualms about killing in order to protect your people. Now you must kill them to survive."

"Why did you choose me?" he asked suddenly. The change of topic fazed me momentarily, but I gathered that he didn't want to think about killing anymore at the moment.

"I told you, I was bored and you interested me."

"How did you find me?"

"I was watching all of the men when the battle started. I sat in the trees," I waved my hand up at the overarching tree branches above our heads, "unnoticed by any of you. As the numbers dwindled, you and a few others were all that was left, and you caught my eye. You were like a god, the way you fought. I was in awe watching you."

He was silent for some time. The fire popped, sending sparks into the air. "I saw you," he murmured as he stared into the fire.

"What?"

"I saw you." His eyes returned to my face. "When I was hurt and being carried away. I saw you in the trees. I thought perhaps you were just a bird or that pain had skewed my vision. But it was you, wasn't it?"

I nodded. Then I got up. "You need to feed," I said.

"What?"

"You need to feed." I offered him my hand, which he took reluctantly. "We have wasted too much time talking, and if you don't feed now it will become much worse later." I pulled him towards the east, which would take us to the closest village. It would be a long walk. He followed without much protest, though I could tell he was unhappy with the idea.

After a few hours I could hear the quiet noises of a sleeping village. "Almost there," I told him. He had let me drag him here without complaining, but now he stopped cold.

"Why are you making me do this?" he asked despairingly.

"Because you have no choice. This is your nature."

"What if I don't want to?"

I growled at him, letting him see my fangs clearly. "Then I will make you." He inhaled sharply, and I stopped growling. "I do not want to force you. I want to teach you, so that you will learn to enjoy it." I lifted my hand to him again. "Come my child, let me teach you." He wrapped his hand around mine unwillingly, and I guided him towards the first heartbeat that I thought suitable for him. I truly did want his first lesson to a pleasurable one.


	3. Chapter 3

***Thank you for reading my story so far. I hope you are enjoying it. Reviews are much appreciated :)

**Chapter Three:**

The blonde one's gaze followed where I was pointing, towards a lone figure leaning against the wooden walls of a hut at the main crossroad in the village.

"You see that person?" I asked him.

"The whore?"

"Yes, her. She's perfect."

We were lying down on a rooftop a few buildings away from the prostitute. The blonde one had not been able to get up there from the ground himself, so I had gathered him into my arms and then jumped up.

"How did you do that?" he had asked me.

"Time and practice. You will be able to do it soon enough, once I teach you."

The blonde one was now watching the woman with a combination of hunger and repulsion. What it was he hungered for and was repulsed by, I did not know.

"I didn't think there were whores in villages this small," he mumbled. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye.

"There have been prostitutes since civilization began. It is the oldest profession in the world."

His mouth gaped open, then a small smile curved his lips. "Is it really?"

I chuckled and shook my head. "I do not actually know, but it's very possible. But we are not here to purchase her wares. We are here for something else."

The amusement he had felt melted instantly, and in its place returned the anger and resentment he had been exhibiting since I had helped him out of the hole. I had been trying to ignore it, but now it was starting to irritate me. I reached over and gripped the front of his shirt and pulled his face right close to mine.

"Look, you are going to have to feed at some point, and if it is not her, then it will be another person. Now, stop resisting this, or you are going to make it harder for yourself in the end." I let him go and pushed him back, then stood up and loomed over him. "A vampire is never at the mercy of his emotions. He dominates them." He shivered slightly at the coldness of my tone, but there was no more time to pamper him; the sun would be up in a short while, and we still had to make it back to my safe place. "Now come."

He didn't move.

"Come!" When I said it this time I felt a sort of power flowing out of me into him, and he got up. I was compelling him, but I didn't know how. He moved toward me sluggishly, but he did come. I put my hands on my hips and considered him for a moment. "Why are you fighting this so much?"

He stopped in front of me and stood like a soldier, with arms straight down, legs together, and head held high. He wasn't looking at me, though. "Because I do not want to _eat_ someone. The idea alone disgusts me! I do not want to do this!"

"You have to. And trust me," I said sincerely, "it is anything _but_ disgusting. Now, we must begin, otherwise there will not be enough time before the sun comes up." I walked to the edge of the rooftop and dropped down, then winded a path towards the whore, compelling my blonde wolf to follow.

"Does the sun really kill us?" he grudgingly asked me while we walked.

"Yes, it does."

"How come?"

I took a hold of his arm and halted him as we came to an alley. I peered into it but saw no one hiding there, so we continued walking. "I don't know. There are theories, but no one knows if they are true."

"What are they?"

"Well, one is that it is a punishment by the gods for attaining eternal life. We were humans, but we have traded in our humanity for immortality and so the gods make the sun lethal to us and force us to spend eternity dwelling in the dark. That seems to be a popular one. Another one is that dead men are buried underground, in the dark; and because we are, in a way, dead men, we cannot handle the sun ‒ we are supposed to be in the dark, like the rest of the dead. This one makes little sense to me because I wonder about those whose bodies are burned. Those dead bodies go into the fire, the light, which would negate the point of this theory. Another theory that seems to be gaining ground is more science-based, and claims that an alteration in the body's internal balance occurs during the changing process, and results in this hypersensitivity to the sun. But there is no way to prove this one yet; the ideology is too far advanced. Wait." I threw my hand out to stop him, slapping him noiselessly on his abdomen. "Shhh."

I was around the corner from the prostitute, and though she could not see me I could see her clearly. She was a dirty thing, with a wild nest of long, coppery hair and dust on her white skin. Her dark eyes looked tired and haggard, and the burgundy dress she wore was ripped in places and the edges were coated in mud. She would do quite nicely, I thought.

My blonde wolf and I stood in the shadow of the building as I considered how we were going to go about this. He folded his arms across his chest as I started explaining, and his was face set in a stubborn cast.

"You can tell me all you like, I'm not going to do this," he interrupted.

I nearly groaned, I was becoming so fed up with his antics. "And no matter how much you don't want to, you will. Because you might _think_ you do not want to, but you do. Here, listen." I pushed him closer to the girl, but kept us still hidden by the building, and made him crouch down so I could put an arm around his shoulder. "Can you hear that?"

He nodded. "What is it?"

"It's her heartbeat," I whispered slowly and seductively. He went rigid. "You can almost feel her blood pulsing though her veins, can't you? Smell her." He involuntarily took a deep breath. "How does she smell?"

"Tantalizing," he said in a thick voice. It was starting to get to him. Finally.

"You can almost taste her, no?"

He nodded again.

"Do you want to taste her?"

A pathetic keening noise came from him, but it caught in his throat as his hunger started to overcome his willpower. The keening turned to a rumble, and grew louder and more intense.

"You see? This is a part of your nature; do not fight it anymore." I seized his jaw in my one hand and turned his face towards mine. His eyes were shining with longing. "I'll repeat: do you want to taste her?"

"Yes!" That one word ripped from him, and just like that he was transformed. Instead of me dragging him along I now had to hold him back from rushing to the girl and ripping her throat out.

"Wait, wait. We must go about this a certain way."

"Why?" he snarled.

"Because, my stupid child, we don't want to be caught." I pressed him against the building and crossed my arms over his chest. "We need to take her away from here, otherwise someone might see us and then start a witch hunt, and we do not want that."

"Witch hunt?" He was confused, but he kept trying to free himself from me.

"Yes. These people, uneducated as they are, are very superstitious and think that everything that looks like a human but doesn't act like a human is a witch. If they were to see us feeding on this girl, they would think we were some form of witches, and send a band of angry men with torches and axes to hunt us down." I leaned back from him a bit and scanned the area to see if there were any other people close to us and the girl. There were none. "Trust me, while it is easy to dispatch these bands, it would be in our best interest to avoid trouble. I do not want to risk them finding us as we sleep during the day and exposing us to the sun."

My child swallowed audibly and stopped struggling against me. "I understand."

"Good. You do not survive a thousand years without being very cautious. Now then, follow me and do only as I tell you."

He agreed and trailed after me as I stepped out from our hiding spot and headed towards the woman. Our footsteps crunched on the dirt road and alerted the whore to our coming. As she watched us approach, a pleased smile adorned her face. She was happy that we were handsome men, that much I could tell. Her eyes widened in wonder as she took in the giant figure of my child, but that only increased her pleasure: apparently she liked tall men.

I stopped a few feet in front of the whore and inclined my head slightly. "Hello, my lady," I said smoothly, even though she was far from a lady.

She dropped a clumsy curtsy and greeted me in return. Her voice was rather high-pitched, and I found it annoying but the blonde one seemed to enjoy it, as his fangs started to push forward. I looked at him, raising my eyebrows and flicking my tongue against my own teeth to warn him to put his fangs away or at least close his mouth to hide them. I did not want the girl to notice that anything was out of place. He seemed to get my hint and put his lips together, and I turned my attention back to the girl.

"Why is such an exquisite creature like yourself out here in the dreary darkness unaccompanied?"

She giggled and let the shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders drop a bit, exposing more of her flesh. "You're quite the poet, eh?"

Logically, if I use large words I must be a poet, right? I restrained myself from scoffing at the stupidity of some humans. Instead, I shifted my feet and tried to look pleased and embarrassed by her comment; most people become uncomfortable around you if you remained too still for too long. "I'm afraid, my dear, I am the furthest thing from a poet. But if poetry is what you like, I could attempt to write a little ditty or two in your honour."

She giggled again and then looked up at me from hooded eyes. Oh yes, this one was trained in the art of seduction. Too bad it affected me very little.

I placed my hand on my child's arm to draw him into the circle of her attention. "My companion and I were just discussing whether or not we should find a beautiful woman to accompany us tonight, and then you appeared like some goddess. You see, we are going to visit my uncle and he does not think very highly of me. But he admires attractive women, and if you came with me, my uncle would be much more agreeable and I would be forever in your debt." I gave her a shy smile.

"What would I have to do?"

"Nothing much. Just smile, talk with him, tell him about my positive attributes."

"Positive what?"

"Attributes. You know, tell him what's good about me."

She bit her lip as she thought. "But I don't know nothing about your good...whatever. What would I tell him?"

I closed the distance between us and bent close to her, deliberately breathing so she could feel my breath on her cheek. I could feel her shudder with delight. "Just lie," I whispered enticingly. Her heartbeat began to quicken. "I can show you my positive attributes afterwards." I backed away, leaving her flushed and eager to 'help' me.

"All right, I'll come," she said unsteadily. She shot me a coy grin as she added: "But remember, you owe me one."

I bowed to her and offered her my arm, which she took. "Come then, we must be off." My child fell in behind us as we started walking.

After a while we were near the edge of the village, the whore asked me where my uncle lived.

"Not far," I replied. "Just outside the village." We continued walking, and I hummed a merry tune.

"Where you both from, anyways?"

I glanced at my child and then back to the woman. "Not here. We are from Västerås. We have come because my aunt sent me a letter saying that my uncle has taken ill. Well, once I knew that, I had to come, and my companion here, one of my oldest, dearest friends, agreed to come with me. You see," I paused for dramatic effect, "even though my uncle is not fond of me, I love him still. He is judgmental, but he has never been cruel. He tried to help my family when my father, his brother, died, lending us a little money to aid us until I was old enough to start work. My mother fell apart when my father passed away. He was her life, and once he was gone she was left with me and my two younger sisters to raise. I was seven at the time." A tear rolled down the whore's cheek. "Oh dear, I've made you cry. That was not my intention." I wiped away her tear, stroking her cheek as I did so. "I'm sorry. Please, do not be sad. Let us talk about something else. What is your name, my darling? I'm so rude to not have asked you before."

She waved her hand, trying to tell me it was all right that I had forgotten to ask. "Don't worry about it, I'm not offended. Katerina is my name. And you? What's your name?"

"My name is Fredrik, and my companion here is named‒"

"Eric," the blonde one said abruptly. "My name is Eric." Katerina slowed down to look at him; it was the first time he had spoken in her presence. She examined him, caressing his body with her eyes and, obviously pleased with what she saw, she offered her empty arm to him, which he took. I saw, over the top of Katerina's head, that my child‒no, Eric's jaw was clenched. He was grappling with his hunger, but I didn't think he'd last much longer. We needed to get further away from the village, and fast. I tightened my grip on Katerina's arm.

"My dear, would it be possible for us to walk a bit more quickly? I fear that my uncle will already be displeased to see me at this hour, and I do not want to be any later and inconvenience him and my aunt any more than I already will. Shall we?" I picked up the pace and she kept up quite easily. We trudged along silently, me leading the both of them into the woods surrounding the village. An owl hooted in a nearby tree, and Katerina started to feel nervous. I could hear it in her heartbeat and her breathing. She pulled me and Eric to a stop.

"Where are we going?" Her skin was clammy with cold sweat.

I looked puzzled. "To my uncle's, of course."

"And your uncle lives in the woods?"

I chortled. "Of course not. But this is the shortest way."

Her eyes bore into me, trying to read my face, as if she would find something there that would tell her exactly what I was thinking. But I had had a thousand years of practice, of contorting my facial features into expressions of ignorance and geniality. She would find nothing there.

She turned her face from me but her gaze was still focused on mine. "Okay," she said hesitantly, and we took off once more.

When I thought we were deep enough into the woods, I halted. Eric and Katerina kept walking, but realizing I wasn't with them they stopped as well.

"Fredrik, what is it?" Eric asked, concerned. Katerina was watching me.

"I think this is far enough."

Eric arched an eyebrow. "Is it?"

"Far enough for what?" Katerina's voice trembled, just like the rest of her. I could smell her fear coming off her in waves, and it excited me. I could feel my countenance, which has been so agreeable and polite before, shift, to be replaced with deadly certainty.

"We aren't going to your uncle's, are we."

"No, silly girl, we are not. My uncles, if I ever had any, are all long dead. Centuries dead, in fact." I gave her a cold smile and glided towards her and Eric. My child stood next to her, quivering with suppressed desire mixed with repugnance. He still did not cherish the idea of feeding on humans. I reached out my hand towards Katerina, which made her flinch. Eric still had her arm and he unconsciously tightened his grip when he felt her trying to get away. He had good instincts at least, when they weren't overrun by his conscience.

I placed my outstretched hand on Katerina's neck, gliding my fingers up and down the curve of her throat. She shut her tear-filled eyes, wanting to block out the image of me with burning eyes and glinting fangs. But I did not care if she saw or not: she would be dead all the same.

"My blonde wolf," I whispered, "it is time."

Eric let go of Katerina to stand next to me. As soon as she felt his grip loosen she tried to run, but before she took three steps I was in front of her. Her mouth opened to scream.

"No!" I caught her gaze with mine, and I felt her will bending to me. She was under my control, now. "You will not scream."

"I will not scream," she repeated in a dead voice.

Eric joined us and saw Katerina's glassy eyes. "What have you done?" he inquired, confusion darkening his tone.

"I have glamoured her."

"You have what?"

Instead of answering, I brought Eric to stand directly in front of Katerina, where I had just been. I placed my hands on either side of his head and directed his gaze. "Look into her eyes," I entranced. "Release your mind of everything, until there is nothing left, no thoughts, no emotions, just emptiness. You are dead, a void. Now, pull her mind into yours. Feel _her_ emotions, hear _her_ thoughts. You can control her mind now. Tell her to do something."

"Tell me how old you are," Eric demanded.

"I am twenty-four years old," Katerina said in the same dead voice.

"Do you want to die tonight?"

"No." She didn't even recoil at the mention of her own death; Eric held her in his sway.

He spoke to me but kept his eyes on the girl. "She doesn't want to die."

"No matter," I said cheerily. "What she wants is of no consequence to us."

"Fredrik!" he admonished. "This is a living human being!"

I walked around them both, circling them like the predator I was. "Yes, I am aware of that. But her death will give you life. Now drink from her."

He shook his head, resisting the hunger cleaving him up from the inside. I circled once more then stopped behind Katerina. "Why do you insist on fighting me?" I asked him sorrowfully.

"Because this is unnatural! We are unnatural!"

I looked at him with sad eyes. "I know. But we are here, and unfortunately we need blood to survive."

"Then I don't want to..." he lost his train of thought when the scent of fresh, warm blood hit his nostrils. I had sliced a shallow cut into Katerina's throat with my fingernail while he had been talking, just enough to let a little blood trickle down. But that was all that was needed. Eric watched the blood like a hawk; his pupils dilated, and a crazed look filled his eyes. Eric slowly dipped his head and put his tongue to the wound, lapping up a drop of blood. That little taste took away all resistance, and without another word Eric stabbed his fangs into her throat. I held Katerina's shoulders as Eric drank, and I could feel the strength leaving her body as he drained her life force. His swallowing was the only sound I could hear, apart from rustling leaves. The woods were eerily quiet; perhaps the animals knew that something dangerous was in their forest.

Eric removed his fangs from Katerina's neck, his mouth dripping blood. His skin appeared warm and rosy, and he looked truly orgasmic. Blood could do that to a vampire.

I released the girl's shoulders and she dropped to the ground, completely and utterly dead. Eric looked at me, and where before I had seen anger and repulsion, I now saw realization setting in.

"Do you understand now, what you are?" I asked him. He did not even try to respond, and that was how I knew that he, at last, wholly understood. I placed my hands on his chest, over his heart. "Your heart no longer beats; your lungs no longer breathe." I tapped his chest once then dropped my hands. "You will never get sick, and you will never grow old. Blood, blood is what sustains us, and without it our existence is meaningless." I caught a red droplet with my finger as it ran down his chin, and stuck the finger in my mouth. Eric watched me as I licked away the blood. "Blood is life," I continued. "It is our obsession, our addiction, and it is absolutely necessary." I gazed down at the body between us. "How do you feel?" I asked, not looking at him.

"I feel..."

"Disgusted? Furious?"

He shook his head.

"No? What then?"

"I feel...good," he said quietly.

I could feel a smile coming on, but I didn't let it show. "Oh? Why the sudden change?"

He stared at me wonderingly. "I don't know. But somehow this feels right."

At that I did let the smile show. "I told you it was your nature. In resisting it you made yourself miserable. It is only when you give yourself over to it that you can be content. Do you feel stronger?"

He nodded.

"More alive? More aware?"

"Yes."

"Are you angry with me?"

He pondered that for a moment, before tentatively saying, "No."

I bent over to grab the body. Like I had done with Eric the night before, I draped her around my shoulders. "You were furious with me a few minutes ago."

"I know. I do not know why I'm not angry anymore, but I will figure it out soon enough. What are you doing with the body?"

"I need to get rid of it," I stated, strolling away.

Eric walked beside me. "Why? Why not just leave it?"

I giggled aloud. "Why, Eric, you've only killed one person and already you have become callous."

"I've killed more," he said tartly. "I've killed dozens."

"I meant as a vampire."

"Oh." He went mute.

"And for your information, I am getting rid of this body because I do not want the villagers finding her. Like I said, these people are very superstitious, and it will just be easier if they do not come looking for us."

"But won't they notice she's gone?"

"Yes, but not for a long while." I hefted the body into a more comfortable position. "That's the reason I chose a whore: if people do not see her, they just assume she's with a client. How do you feel about moving?"

"Moving?" Eric echoed, puzzled by the shift in conversational direction. "Why?"

Katerina's limbs were growing cold. I always hated carrying the dead around. "Because where we are now isn't a good location for you. It is too far from human population, and we need to move closer to a larger city so that when people go missing it is less noticeable. Once you have tasted the blood it will be harder for you to resist the next time, so you will probably need to feed more often, and to do that we need a larger populace."

He shrugged nonchalantly. "It's not like I had time to get attached to the place anyways."

"So you do not mind moving?"

"Hmm," was all he said.

We saw a small lake off to our left and headed for it, both of us silently agreeing that this was good enough. I dropped Katerina's body onto the ground and started looking about for some large rocks. I found three that would suffice, and carried them back and put them next to Katerina. I pulled out some twine I had in a pouch on my belt.

"What are you doing with those? And why do you have string?"

I unravelled the mess and ripped off three long pieces. "It's twine, and you would be surprised how many times you actually need it. And of course, when you don't have it is when you need it the most. I need to tie these rocks to Katerina, to prevent her body from floating." I knotted a piece of twine around both her ankles and one around her neck. I tied the rocks to her and then stripped off my clothing and left it in a pile next to Eric. I hauled Katerina's body down to the lake and dove in. The water was icy cold, and even as a vampire I would not be able to stay in here comfortably for a lengthy duration. I swam to the deepest part in the middle, then released the body and watched as it sank to the bottom. It would be a good long while before anyone found her body, if they ever did. I swam back to the shore, and clambered out.

"We should be heading back," I told Eric as I dressed. He concurred wordlessly, and as soon as I had all my clothes on we both vanished into the dark forest.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I am using modern-day country and city names and boundaries, rather than using the names and boundaries that were in place in and around the 1100s. I figured it would be easier to understand this way.

Some of my information for Godric comes from the _Sookie Stackhouse_ books, though the majority of my character traits are based on the television show. In the books, Godric is sexually attracted to children.

And again, reviews are always appreciated

**Chapter Four:**

"Is your name really Fredrik?" Eric asked me.

We were back at my safe location and waiting out the hour until the sun rose. I tossed a stick onto the fire and shook my head.

"So what is it, then?"

"My real name is of no consequence. You may call me Godric."

"Godric," he repeated in a hushed voice. "Why not Fredrik, if neither is your real name?"

"Because I would prefer for you to call me Godric. And you? Is your name really Eric, or just one you so eagerly chose?"

He pulled his legs closer to him and stared off into the distance. "It doesn't really matter, does it?"

"No, it does not. Do you wish me to call you Eric?"

He shrugged. "Sure, it works as well as any other." He returned to staring, and for a while neither of us spoke. Then Eric broke the silence:

"I have a question: if you could have just glamoured Katerina from the very start, why did you bother with all that acting?"

"Acting? What acting?"

He gave me a don't-even-pretend-you-don't-know-what-I'm-talking-about look. It was quite good, from one so young. "You know, the whole charming and wooing thing you did."

"Oh, that. I do that because I enjoy the chase. I enjoy trying to win them over and convincing them that I want to be their friends."

"Why?"

"Because when they realize I am not who I pretend to be, it gives me shivers. Pleasurable shivers," I said, dreadfully serious.

Eric's eyes caught the light of the fire and glinted orange as he glared at me. "Isn't that kind of sadistic?"

Suddenly, I was very tired. "When you've lived a thousand years, you try to amuse yourself anyway you can," I snapped. I instantly regretted it when Eric shrunk as if I had slapped him. I apologised. "I tend to get irritable when I am tired and hungry."

"You didn't feed tonight, did you?" This fact had only just dawned on him.

"No."

"Why not?"

I got up from the fire. "Because tonight was about you. Now I think it is time to get ready for bed." At that exact moment I felt the tug. Eric felt it too because he asked me what the feeling was.

"That is your warning to seek shelter. It means that the sun will be up soon."

Eric copied me and stood up, brushing leaves and dirt from his pants. "So where do we sleep?"

I nodded towards the hole we had been in last night. Some of the blood drained from Eric's face. "You cannot mean that," he said fearfully.

"Unfortunately I do. It is all we have right now."

"What about the cave?" he said, pointing to the rock shelter just beyond the hole.

I gave Eric a sympathetic pat on the back. "It isn't light-tight. If we slept there, we would be dead before sunset. For now, the ground is our only option." I led him to the hole and peeked over its edge. "It isn't so bad, really. You get used to it eventually." I gently shoved him into the hole, and he fell in a large pile. He glared up at me angrily.

"You could have just asked me to get it," he complained.

"Tsk, tsk, sullenness detracts from your beauty, my child." I leapt down and landed standing over Eric, with my legs on either side of him. "You'd better shut your eyes and mouth, you do not want dirt to get inside them." He obeyed, for a precious instant.

"Do all vampires spend their eternities in the ground?"

"No, not all. In fact, many of them have houses that they have sealed up to prevent the sunlight from coming in, and sleep in beds."

Eric sat up eagerly. "Can we do that?"

I sighed, and then grabbed an armful of dirt. "Yes, when we find somewhere else to move. Now, lean back, shut your mouth and close your eyes. It is time for us to go to sleep." I began piling dirt onto Eric, and when there was sufficient covering I burrowed my way down to him. He was stretched out on his back, nearly unconscious already. I lay next to him and pressed my back to his side, and closed my eyes. Sleep took much longer to suck me under than Eric.

* * *

The next day, like I had promised, we started moving, looking for a new place to settle. I had decided that we were going to head north and east, out of Sweden, and then circle around south and west and head towards France. I'd always wanted to see France. This was a much longer route to take to France, but to take a ship from Sweden to the Netherlands, or even to Germany, would have been too much for Eric to handle, him being so young; there was only a limited supply of blood onboard, after all. I also wanted to take this opportunity to explore more of the world, and to get to know Eric, my child, better.

After I had been made a vampire, I had done much travelling, though it was mostly in Western and Northern Europe. I had also discovered quite young, perhaps three hundred years old, that I had the unique ability to fly, and that had made travelling much quicker. Eric could not fly; I did not know if he ever would, since it seemed that not all vampires could, or whether he needed to grow older and more powerful, but our travelling was entirely on foot, which I was not unhappy with. Even walking, vampires are still faster than humans when they choose to be.

A few months of travelling saw us inside the western border of Russia, in Novgorod, a large and bustling city. Novgorod is an important centre for international trade, and it is populated enough to provide many distractions for us two. While it is a bit further east than I planned to go, Eric had insisted on seeing it since we were in Russia: apparently he had heard mention of its name in Sweden, and was interested in exploring it. If it's one thing a vampire has, it is time, and so it is impossible for us to waste time because it is meaningless to us; I agreed to take Eric to the city, even though it would make our journey to France longer. Eric was excited to see Novgorod, and I was just happy to see him excited; it reminded me why I had turned Eric into a vampire: because of his excitement and liveliness.

When we arrived in Novgorod, the first thing I did was go about finding us a place to stay. Eric was tired of sleeping in the ground, and quite frankly, so was I. He had not stopped complaining to me every night about how it felt to be buried in the cold and damp, and to wake up with dirt in every single orifice. I told him to stop whining, since I knew how it felt better than he did. He didn't.

Despite these little bouts of resistance from him, which I sometimes did enjoy, Eric had become much more pliable, almost a perfect child. He no longer fought me when I told him it was time to feed, and in fact he started to relish the hunt. He had become quite adept at wooing, as he called it, fellow travellers and residents of small communities and villages that we passed, and persuading them to follow him into the dark, where I would be waiting to strike. He would grin like a little boy when I told him he had done well, and every time he tried to outdo himself by choosing someone more attractive, or more difficult to persuade. But he always got them, in the end. I think it was a combination of his good looks and his charm that endeared people to him. I did not think he resented me at all, anymore, for making him a vampire. He seemed to realize that I had given him the gift of life, of a second chance, and once he had accepted what he was, a vampire, he was determined to suck every droplet out of his new life. He wasted nothing, and instead tried to see the joy and beauty in every little thing. He had started to nearly worship me for stealing him away from death, which amused me to no end. He even began asking me about my life, as a human and a vampire, but I fear I was sorely lacking in my answers. I hardly remembered my past anymore, only bits and pieces here and there.

One night, not long after we arrived in Novgorod, Eric was sitting on a carpet in the house that I had attained for us, asking me questions of my past. When I had found the house, only an old, sick man lived there, and I could tell instantly that he was tired of living; so I told him I was Death come to take him, if he so wished it.

"Yes," he said, his voice wet from excess moisture in his lungs. He coughed and spat out a glob of phlegm and wiped his hand across his mouth. He was shaking with the effort of remaining upright.

"Invite me in," I told him. He did, and I escorted him to the single chair in the small room. He sat down, and I kneeled before him, placing my hands on his thighs. "Do you have any family left, anyone who would mourn your passing?"

He shook his head, tears filling his eyes. "All gone. My wife...she died giving birth to our child. A daughter. She died too, with her mother. She weren't strong enough." The tears streaked his face and fell onto his shirt.

"I am sorry. But I am here to relieve you of your pain," I crooned to him. He nodded shakily.

"Do it, then," he said. "Now."

I smiled up at him, a beautiful, angelic smile, and then I crawled onto his lap and bit his throat. I did this cleanly, not wanting to leave a mess. I felt the old man deserved a clean death, at the very least. It was strange how affected by him I was.

When he was dead, I carried him out to the backyard of the house and buried him. I even shed a few scarlet tears for him. Then I grabbed a wooden board, went back inside, and attached it to the only window, with hinges, so that it would swing shut to block out daylight and swing open to let the moon shine in.

"Godric!"

I shook myself back to the present. Eric had been asking me something, but I had not paid him any attention.

He looked at me with concern, moving closer to the chair I was sitting in; the same one the old man had sat in only two nights ago. "What is the matter?"

"Nothing, nothing. What did you want to know?"

"I was asking if all vampires forget their pasts, like you." He leaned his back against the leg of the chair.

"No, not all. A large number of them do remember their pasts very clearly, but I am not one of them. I think it depends on how much you value your past. To me it means little; who I was before I became a vampire means little, and so I have forgotten most of it. At times I can remember some things."

"Like where you came from?"

"Yes." Eric's blonde hair glimmered in the moonlight that spilled in though the window, and I had a sudden urge to touch it. I put my hand on his head, and though I felt Eric's back stiffen at the contact, he did not try to stop me, and quickly relaxed under my touch. I ran my fingers through his long, soft hair, and Eric leaned into the caress. This was nice; it felt comfortable. "I can remember where I came from because of my tattoos. They are a permanent reminder of the society I belonged to. They also help me to remember pieces of my father."

"Your father?"

"Yes. My father, he was the one who gave me the tattoos. I remember I was a warrior, because it was the warriors who received the tattoos, and I can remember my father telling me not to yell or draw back from the pain, that I must be strong and endure. He marked me, and he was never prouder of me than in that moment, when I achieved the markings of a warrior."

"But you were only a child. How could you be a warrior?"

I smiled benevolently down at the back of Eric's head. _My_ _child_. "How old were you when you became a soldier?"

He turned to me, flushed with embarrassment, and I patted his cheek.

"You see," I said, "you were only a child too. I may look younger than you, but I was about the same age you were when you were made a soldier. And times were different then, a thousand years ago. You had to grow up very quickly in order to survive." I returned to stroking his hair while I tried to remember my human life. "I had a mother, too, but I have no memories her. I do not know if she was pretty, sweet, stubborn. I don't know if I had siblings. The only one I can remember is my father, and him very little."

"What was he like? Do you remember that?"

"Not very well." I was searching deep inside myself, trying to grab at any memories I could. I felt a little pathetic, not being able to remember people who had once been very important to me. "He taught me to hunt, and to fight. There was one time he had me walk out onto a lake covered in thin ice, because he was trying to teach me a lesson."

"What lesson was that?"

"I don't..." It was there, at the edge of my mind. The lesson. The one I had said I would never forget, only I had. I clutched at it, but it kept slipping through my fingers, just like all my other memories. "I can't recall."

Eric watched my internal struggle with curiosity. He had never seen me in such a state before. "Never mind," he consoled. "It does not matter." His gaze rested on the crook of my neck, and I looked down to see that a part of the tattoo that ran along my collarbones was showing. He reached out and touched the material of my shirt. "Can I look?" he asked me.

"You've already seen them."

His grip tightened and he started to slowly pull the fabric down my shoulder, hesitating when I shifted in the chair. "Please?" he beseeched.

I leaned forward and pulled the shirt over my head, then let it fall to the ground. Eric's eyes took in all the different shapes and runes on my skin, looking like he was trying to memorize them. I had had no idea my tattoos had fascinated him so.

Eric altered his position so that he was kneeling in front of me, very much like how I had done with the old man. "Can I touch them?"

I nodded, and he placed his cool fingers on my skin. They danced across my flesh, sending shivers down my spine. No one had touched me for a very long time.

"They feel just like the rest of your skin," he said, astonished.

"They aren't brands, so there is no scar tissue. They are just ink pressed into the skin." He continued skimming his hands over my tattoos, until I grabbed his wrists. "That is enough, my child. You've seen them enough for now." Eric crouched on his hocks and looked up into my eyes. "Please," I said, pointing downwards, "pass me my shirt." He handed it up to me, and I hid my tattoos from him.

"What do they mean?" he asked me.

"I've forgotten, like everything else. It has been so long since I was told their meanings."

"Do you think...?" Eric started, but then stopped.

"What is it?"

Eric sat back down and leaned against the chair again. "Do you think I'll forget everything?"

"That is difficult to tell. You may, or you may remember every insignificant detail of every day. Only time will tell." I got up out of the chair and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Eric called to my back.

"I am going to go for a walk."

"I'll come with‒"

"No." He was taken aback by my hasty interjection. "No, it is all right. I find I want to be alone right now. You wait here for me." I walked out, but then stuck my head back in. "And Eric? Do not follow me." I strode humanly slow away from the house, and all the way I could feel Eric's gaze burning my back.

* * *

I came back to the house about three hours later. It was almost one in the morning, and I could sense that Eric was waiting anxiously for me to return. As soon as I stepped inside he jumped up.

"Where were you?" he demanded.

I walked past him into the next room, which was the bedroom. He followed. I straightened the bedspread and lit a candle.

"What are you doing?"

"Hush," I said. "Wait just a moment." I went back outside, where a woman was waiting. I told her it was okay to come in, and opened the door for her. She took a quick look around the room before entering, and gasped quietly when Eric came out of the bedroom. I could somewhat understand her reaction: Eric was an impressive figure.

Eric took the whole scene in, with me in the doorway and the girl standing in the main room. "Godric, what is going on?"

I leaned against the jamb, my arms crossed over my chest, and explained to him, "In everything I have been teaching you, I seem to have neglected certain...other needs. I have brought you a gift."

Eric glanced between me and the girl. "This?" he asked, pointing a thumb at the girl.

"Yes. Her name is Lilia, and she comes highly recommended." I gave him a knowing grin.

His mouth formed a little 'o' when he caught my meaning.

"It is no good," I continued, moving into the room and closing the door behind me, "to teach you to control one urge while another one slips out of control. It is easier to manage your...eating habits...if all your other desires are sated as well." I had to be careful what I said around the girl, lest I reveal our true natures to her human self.

Lilia was a fine figure of a woman. She had waves of silky black hair, smooth, clear, pale skin, and very bright blue eyes. She was deliciously voluptuous, and when I saw her I knew Eric would approve.

Eric inspected the girl quite thoroughly, and seemed pleased by my choice of females. "And you think I need this?"

"I am just assuming," I replied, shrugging. "While I was walking, I was thinking on things, and I realized that I hadn't allowed you an opportunity to...release yourself. For one so young and voracious as yourself, I realize it has been difficult for you to dampen your sexual urges for such a long period of time in order to listen to me talking on and on. So I have decided to reward you for being a good child, and will allow you to choose a woman for yourself every night, if you so wish it."

Lilia chose to ignore the peculiarities of this speech, though I guarantee she was curious about why I, the apparently younger man, was referring to the apparently older man as a child and a student. But, good girl, she did not say anything about it.

I said to Eric, "Do not worry about anything, it has all been taken care of. She has been paid, and she will do whatever you wish." I beckoned him closer, and he bent down. "But hear this: she is not your dinner. I know it will be difficult for you to do, but I do not want you killing her. If you did, I would be suspected, since there are some who saw her leave with me. We do not want them coming to our door during the daytime. Do you think you can do that?"

Eric nodded in agreement, and straightened to his full height. I shooed him away with my hands, and he went over to the girl. She beamed up at him. She really was very pretty.

"Lilia, dear," I said, "take good care of him."

"Will do, sir." She winked at me then focused back on Eric.

He whispered to her, "Go wait for me in the bedroom. I'll be there in a moment." Lilia went obediently. Eric stood in the centre of the main room, making it look very tiny. It was a small house, with only the main room, which had a fire pit for cooking and heat, and the bedroom, but Eric made it look smaller. He made me feel smaller. "You're not joining?" he asked me uncertainly. Though he had been touching me only a few hours before, and though he admired me, Eric had no desire to have sex with me: Eric loved women, through and through, though I knew he would if I asked him to. It did not bother me, since I had no desire to have sex with him, either. He was too old for my tastes.

"No," I reassured him.

"Will you wait here?"

"No."

He clasped his hands in front of him, his right pinkie finger twitching. It is what he did when he was anticipating something. "Where will you go, then?"

"Not far. I met a rather interesting group of people on my walk. Rogue soldiers, I believe. I think I will go join them for a few hours." I touched his hands briefly, then left. For a while after, I could still hear them; Eric seemed to be enjoying himself. I smiled to myself, and eventually I reached the point where I could not hear them anymore; the distance was too great. I hadn't lied to Eric when I said that I had met some rogues, and I thought that their stories would be very entertaining. I was not wrong.


	5. Chapter 5

***Disclaimer: the information about Alexander the Great comes from the top of my head, from courses I have taken, books I have read, and research I have done on him.

All information on the Vikings is made up, so it is very likely totally inaccurate.

And again, the borders and names of cities and countries are modern.

**Chapter Five:**

We ended up staying in Novgorod much longer than I had anticipated. Every time I had thought of bringing up leaving to Eric, something distracted me. Most of the times it was Eric's pure joy in the city: at being surrounded by people, at not having to sleep in the ground, and at being able to feed on almost anyone without attracting too much attention to ourselves. Or it was the people of the city themselves, who I found to be fascinating creatures, constantly on the move to make a living, and always willing to swap stories with me. Most of the times I had to laugh at their versions of historical events, because they were sometimes ones I'd had first-hand experience with; but I could not let them know that, so I went along with whatever fabrication they were telling. The fabrications were, in many cases, much more interesting than the real events anyways. Whatever the reason was, it was months before we finally collected ourselves and left, and not without a little regret on our part. I had grown quite fond of the city, as had Eric.

We travelled south, instead of south-west, because I told Eric, when we were leaving Novgorod, that I would like to see Greece before we went to France: I'd always had a special place in my heart for the country, because of its bountiful history; it was a place that made even me feel young. When we reached Greece, I insisted that we settle at Pella for a period of time; Pella was the birthplace of Alexander the Great, and was formerly a part of the great Macedonian kingdom, though now it was a Greek city. I had much admiration for Alexander, for his ambition and his determination to do so much while so young. His conquering of most of the world by the age of thirty-two was a feat I marvelled at. One day, I would like to undertake a replica journey of Alexander's thirteen-year campaign, and travel to the far east, into India itself. I would like to see elephants, ready and charging in battle the way Alexander had. I would go to Thebes, and see the city that dared refuse entry to Alexander, and which he razed to the ground for its insolence. I would visit the tomb of Achilles, anoint it with oil, and strip off my clothes and run around it naked, as the old ones did. I would go to Gordium, and slice apart the Gordian Knot with a sword. I would go to Siwah, and see the oracle of Ammon and ask the god of my future. I would conquer the Persian empire, with my Hephaestion by my side, my Patroclus, my Eric. I would continue into Arabia, the campaign Alexander had planned but never got to see out. I would immerse myself into the history this man created, and never dare to come out of it again.

Eric and I remained in Pella for quite a number of years. I was adamant in staying, because I wanted to find out as much as I could about the colourful history of Alexander. I researched his mother, Olympias, and her seeming affinity for snakes; and his father, Philip II, king of Macedonia before he was assassinated and Alexander took his place. I studied his tutors: Lysimachus, also called Phoenix, Leonidas, and Artistotle; and I studied his soldiers and companions: Hephaestion, Antipater, Antigonus One-Eyed, Cassander, Nearchus, Ptolemy, and whoever I could find information on. I was so consumed that Eric had to remind me to feed, so that I would not grow weak. I complied with his wishes, but as soon as I had finished I would return to pouring over ancient books and inscriptions. I was like a crazed man, and Eric was becoming worried about me.

As we were wandering about, looking at the landscape one night, Eric asked me why I was so interested in the history of a city or a man, but not my own.

"I feel that my own history is inadequate," I replied honestly. "I have never done anything spectacular, nor do I think I ever will. You might not think this of me, but I am also somewhat of a dreamer: I imagine how I would have been if I had lived in ancient Greece, or was one of Alexander's men. I create whole scenarios in my mind about how I would speak, eat, live; about how I would fit into that culture, rather than the one I exist in now. I construct a whole life where everything I have actually done, the life I have lived up to this exact point in current time, does not exist, and I lived thousands of years ago."

A few nights after that, while I was pouring over an old map of the world, Eric came to my room. At this point we were living in a relatively large house, constructed from the local blocks of marble ‒ it was a big improvement on our house in Novgorod. It had a sizeable main room, a little cooking area, a copper tub, and two bedrooms. No one had lived there for a while, not since the previous owner had died a few months back. Eric and I had made sure the place was safe to sleep during the daylight hours when we had moved in, filling in any cracks where the sun could seep in.

I was sprawled on my stomach on the floor of my bedroom, a candle burning next to me. I did not really need the candle, but I did enjoy the ambiance. Eric knocked on the open door, and without waiting for me to respond he came in and stood by the bed, behind me.

"What are you looking at?" he asked me.

I made a mark on the map with a piece of charcoal. "Just an old map. I am looking at other places we might stop at on our way to France."

"That's what I want to talk to you about, Godric." The bed made a _whoosh_ing noise as Eric flopped backwards onto it. I looked at him, but all I could see was his legs, so I went back to studying the map. "You said we were going to France, but it has been years since you declared that."

I made another mark on the map. "Are you eager to get to France?"

"No, not at all. I just wonder why you even told me we were going there. Why do we need a destination? Why don't we just explore the world?" He sat up and gave me an intense look. "We should be able to go wherever we want, whenever we want."

I got up off my stomach and sat cross-legged on the floor, and thought deeply about Eric's suggestion. "Perhaps you are right," I admitted. "Perhaps I was too hasty in deciding on a destination. We have so much time to spare, and nowhere we need to be. I am not even sure why I chose France, I just said the first place that came into my head." I grazed my thumbnail over my bottom lip. "No, you may be right, we should go where we please. I did not even ask you where you wanted to go."

"No, you did not." Eric reached over and grabbed the charcoal from my hand, then crumbled it between his fingers. "But I do not care where we go; I will go anywhere. I just want you to know that we do not actually have to go to France; we do not have to have a destination. I say we should just roam." His eyes were bright with excitement, and he patted the space on the bed next to him, motioning for me to join him. I did. "Whenever you are satisfied with the Mediterranean, we should go wherever your desires carry you next. France will be there in a year, a decade, a century from now; we will see it on our own time. There is no hurry, is there?" He poked my nose with his charcoal-coated fingers, and left a dark mark behind. The smudge appeared to please him, and he began to draw other shapes on my face with his fingers. I was sure that when he was finished, I would look like a barbarian.

"You are such a child," I chided affectionately. He grinned at me. "Okay," I said to him once he was done drawing. "We will stay here for as long as we wish, then we will go wherever afterwards, whether it be east, west, north or south."

"Perfect," Eric said happily. He considered the designs he had drawn on my face, and his happiness faded. He got off the bed and went to look for something. He left the room, and a minute later he came back with a dripping wet cloth in his hands. He sat beside me again, and began to wipe away his artwork.

"Eric, what is the matter?"

"Nothing, it's stupid," he answered glumly, scrubbing my face rather vigorously. I pushed his hand away.

"Eric, tell me."

He let the now black cloth sit wetly on his lap. "It just reminded me of what my younger brother used to do to amuse our father."

"You had a brother?" I hadn't known that. I realized that I knew very little about Eric's past.

"Yes, his name was Jonatan. Whenever we knew that my father was coming home from one of his excursions, Jonatan used to cover his face with mud and hide in the bushes. When my father walked past, Jonatan would jump up and try to frighten my father. Father always pretended to be scared, though he knew that it was Jonatan, and he would pretend to be mad, but we all knew he enjoyed it. Of course, once Jonatan got older he stopped doing this, and my father missed it. It had been a special thing between the two of them."

This was the most Eric had told me about himself since I had made him. I felt somewhat guilty for not asking him about his life before now. "So, you had a brother and a father. A mother? What was your life like?" I encouraged him to continue.

He gave me a marked look and lay back on the bed again, this time more gently. "Why are you so interested all of a sudden? I thought my past was irrelevant."

"Maybe so," I said, "but if you want to tell me then I will listen."

He took a deep breath before he began ‒ he still maintained some of his human traits. "Well, I was a Viking, though I think you knew that already." I nodded and kept quiet. "My father was a Viking as well, and he taught me everything he knew. He taught me sailing, hunting, warfare, trading; he taught me how to trick the enemy into believing we were fewer than we actually were, or into believing we had more men than we actually did. Sometimes these tricks saved more lives than the fighting did. He also taught me how to barter. Anyways, my father was not one of the leaders of our Viking society, but he was very influential. Others would listen when he spoke, and if he spoke out against a decision made by our leaders, it could create a very fierce debate between the people. But most of the times my father preferred peace, and would go along willingly with whatever the others had chosen."

I shifted backwards on the bed so I was resting against the wall, and Eric turned on his side so that he was talking directly to me. "Most of his youth, my father spent travelling, trading, fighting, and pillaging," Eric continued. "It was when he met my mother that things started to change. My mother was a beautiful woman. She was from another village close by, and when my father and his men raided it, he saw her and took her away. There was no courting, no attempt to win her affections. He simply grabbed her and took her back to our village, and forced her to have his children. I was the oldest, and then Jonatan. She had given birth to a few other children, but they all died during birth or in their infancy. My mother did not hate my father, but she did not love him either. She was angry that he took her away from her home, but she did respect his strength. She did loved her children though, Jonatan and myself. My father did love my mother. He tried to stop fighting and trading so that he would not be away from home too often, but there were times when he had to leave. He would tell Jonatan and me to look after our mother while he was gone, and he always said this with tears in his eyes. He hated to leave.

"My father died away from home. He and his men were travelling to another village to exchange some goods, when they were ambushed by thieves. Because they hadn't been going to fight, my father and his men were not as well prepared as they should have been. They fought back, but there were too many thieves, and eventually they were all killed. It took weeks for us to find the bodies and discover what had happened. Anyways, my mother was saddened by this news because now our lives would become more difficult. My father was no longer there to protect and provide for us, so I was sent from home to continue the training my father had begun, to make me a proper Viking man. Jonatan was supposed to come as well, but he asked to become a forger instead, so he was apprenticed to the only forger in our village. He had never liked bloodshed." A strong desire for comfort surged in Eric, a palpable yearning that I felt through our blood bond; a need to be comforted by the only friend he now knew: me. Talking about his human past was more distressing than he had thought it would be. But he refused to give into this longing for comfort, thinking it made him appear weak. Eric had never been one for physical contact, only on the rare occasion; and though he wanted to ask me, he could not bring himself to. I apprehensively placed my hand on his shoulder, giving him the opportunity to pull away, which he did not. I patted him absently, and Eric compromised between his urge to seek comfort and the urge to resist it and allowed himself to enjoy this moment of intimacy, before he proceeded with his story:

"Jonatan was...the shame of our village. Luckily my father died before he got to witness his loving son become the town disgrace. You see, Jonatan was, well, he was weak. He could hardly lift a sword, let alone wield one to defend his people. He nearly fainted at the sight of blood and he...he preferred the company of men." His muscles tensed under my hand, but I kept it on his shoulder and he did not try to shake me off. "You must understand, our people were all about fighting, and fucking. Our only mission was to defend our village and to raise the next generation to continue to defend the village. There was no room for any sort of difference, and Jonatan was different. Our leaders long ago had formed a council that discussed events that pertained to our people, and they decided that Jonatan must learn to become a true man. They forced him into training with men who were far more experienced than him, and during a practice fight Jonatan was killed. This devastated my mother, and soon after she died too. She could not stay alive just for me. I wasn't enough." Eric turned his head from me as he said this and tried to stop himself from crying, but the red tears seeped into his eyes.

I rubbed his back and tried to think of things to stay that would console him. It was difficult, since I hadn't had to do it in a very long time. "It is okay," I murmured softly. "There was nothing you could do about it." Eric attempted to wipe away his tears with his fingers, but that only spread the blood all over his face. I took the cloth that he had used to wipe away my charcoal markings, and cleaned away his tears. "What happened after?" I asked him.

Eric sniffled before he spoke again, another one of his human gestures he still retained. "I followed in my father's footsteps, and then outshone him. I became the best fighter, and led my people into every battle we had. For years, all I did was wage warfare on neighbouring towns. I spent more time away from home than I did at home, but I did not mind: I enjoyed fighting, the adrenaline, the carnage. I enjoyed killing, and that made me the perfect soldier. I fought consistently from when I was seventeen until I was almost thirty. Then one day, we came upon a band of enemy soldiers, and crushed them; but what we did not know was that they had replacement soldiers coming, and when those soldiers saw what we did to their men they followed and surrounded us. We were greatly outnumbered, but we fought as best we could. That was when you found us," he clarified.

I curled my legs closer to me and thought about the day I had found Eric. "You had won, though."

"Barely. I would hardly consider three remaining men a great victory. And then of course you came along and killed my two friends like it was the easiest thing in the world, and then turned me."

"Are you angry that I turned you?"

"No." Eric sat up and put his hands on both sides of my neck, forcing me to look at him. "No, I am not."

I pulled away from him. Sometimes he was too intense for my liking. "You know, Eric, you never did tell me why you suddenly stopped hating me, that first night after I made you."

"I think," he started gingerly, like he was considering every word before he spoke it, "it was because, after I had killed that girl, I realized the gift you had given me. When I had not yet fed for the first time, I could pretend to still be human, despite the fangs and no heartbeat. I could pretend that all you had told me was an elaborate story meant to scare me, and at any moment you would tell me that I was stupid for believing anything you had said. I was so desperate for _my_ life, that I hated you for trying to make me realize that I had changed, and I could not go back to my old life. But when I smelled that blood, and fed from that girl, I realized that I was different and that you had been truthful." He did not seem to be speaking to me anymore, but rather like he was speaking to the air, as if I was not there in the room with him. "I was no longer human, no longer the man I had been before. For a brief instant after I killed her, I was still furious with you. Then I understood that you had saved me the only way you could, you gave me life the only way you knew how, and the payment that I had to make for this life was blood. You had given me a choice, and I chose life. Why should I care what kind of life it was, so long as I got to live?"

"How very progressive of you," I said, and my tone was thick with sarcasm, which Eric chose to disregard.

"I knew, after I had fed, that you had done the only thing you could have."

"I could have killed you." That came out sounding quite merry, and Eric was dismayed.

"Perhaps," he replied tepidly, "and there are days when I wonder if that would have been preferable."

"Nights," I corrected him, to which he seemed bewildered. "We do not have days, we have nights." He ogled me like I was some sort of foreign animal he could not figure out, before getting up and going to his own room. I went after him and came upon his closed door, which I opened without knocking and looked in. He was lying on his bed with his back towards me.

"Eric?" He made no response, so I did not go any further into his room. "If you ever feel like it has become too much, like you cannot handle it anymore, I can still kill you if you want me to."

Eric rolled over slowly, his face contorted in anger and incredulity. He said nothing, and I was about to leave when his mouth opened. "Thanks, _father_," he hissed at me, and got off his bed to slam his door on me. I stood outside, staring at his door for what seemed an eternity, wondering what I did wrong and whether I should go back and talk about it. Or whether I should break down his door and command him to be more respectful. I decided against doing any of these and went back to my own room, and double-checked to make sure that there were no cracks for the sun to come in and kill me while I slept.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six:**

There was tension between Eric and myself after our previous conversation, and it lasted for some time. I did not understand why he was angry with me, so I decided that maybe a change in scenery would ease the strain, so Eric and I moved to Athens. I had expected to be equally enthusiastic about being in Athens as I had been in Pella, but I could not muster the energy. Like I had done in Pella, I continued my researched into Greece's ancient history, digging all the way back to the life and stories of Homer, up to the conquering of Greece by the Romans, but my fervour was not as it had been before. I was troubled and confused by my child's emotions, but I did not know how to go about trying to help him, so I left him alone. What I did not discern was that Eric did not want to be alone. In actuality, alone was the last thing Eric craved.

It was not until Eric threw a fit that I understood this. Part of the reason why Eric had been mad at me was because he felt I had deserted him. While he had been angry over something I had said, he got over that quickly and was more upset by the fact that I did not try to talk to him. I had not realized that he had wanted to discuss matters, and I told him so.

"You had just offered to kill me!" he yelled at me.

"Is that what this is about?"

"Of course it is!" His voice got, if possible, louder. "What else would it be about?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," I said sincerely. "I am perplexed by this sudden outburst."

His face turned red with anger. I did not know that vampire faces could do that. "I thought you cared about me, as a friend, but you offered to kill me as easily as if you had offered me a piece of fruit."

I ground my teeth together in frustration. "Eric, let me be clear about this: I made that offer to you _as a friend_. I was offering to ease your suffering if it became unbearable. How could that possible incense you?"

Eric's upper lip was curled, and I could see his fangs. He really was livid. "I am angry because you do not understand me. You make a comment like that, and then you abandon me."

"Hold on." I motioned for him to slow down. "Abandon? What are you talking about?"

"You were never around after you made that comment. You only came home to go to bed. It was like you were ignoring me, like _you_ were mad at and did not want to talk with _me_."

My head was whirling with all the emotions flying around. I had never known a vampire as volatile as Eric. I reminded myself that that was why I had been attracted to him in the first place, but at this moment I found that hard to believe. "Stop, Eric. Just stop. Now, go back and tell me why you are angry. Start at the beginning. And no shouting," I admonished.

Eric's lips pursed together, but he obeyed. "I was upset with you that night when you offered to kill me. It made me feel like you thought very little of me, and that to kill me would be no hardship on your behalf. But I got over that." He gave me a strangled smile. "The next night, I wanted to talk to you, but you had left as soon as you woke up, and did not come back until sunrise. And you did that every night after. I felt like you were trying to avoid me, as if I was a plague that you wanted to be rid of. I am angry because I have no one else but you, but you do not care ‒ about me, about anything but a ridiculous history that isn't even your own." He stopped and waited for my reaction.

"You know," I said slowly, "you do realize that you sound like a woman, with all your talk of _feelings_."

"Shut up," he said through clenched teeth. "I am trying to be serious."

I shut my mouth and held up my hands in surrender, and let him go on.

"It is difficult for me when you are the only one I know, the only one I can trust. I used to have an entire town as friends, but now it is only you. Your leaving me alone all the time made me anxious, because I began to think that I would have to spend my eternity in solitude, and that prospect scares me; and sadly for now, you are all I have standing between me and infinite loneliness." He finished talking.

My child. Such a strong warrior, but at the same time so delicate and fragile. He was a very strange person, Eric. I took in his 6'4" frame, and knew that if I wanted to, I could bring him to his knees in an instant; and for some reason, this thought did not delight me. "You are very irrational, my child. But Eric," I said to him solemnly. "I cannot promise that I will not leave you. There may come a time when I feel that I will have to leave. However, I will try to tell you when that time is at hand; that is the best I can do. Now, I want you to promise me something."

He hesitated, but then nodded.

"I do not want you to lose your temper like that with me again. If you feel I have done something wrong, then talk to me."

"But you would not let me. You were never around."

"Then leave me a note or something. Anything to let me know that you have something you'd like to discuss with me. Okay?" Eric sighed, but agreed. "Good. Now I have something to tell _you_: though I will admit I was, and still am, baffled by your reasons for being upset, my staying away from the house had nothing to do with you; I was continuing my research on _ridiculous _Greek history that I began in Pella. Here." I thrust a book at him that I had been carrying. It was filled with all the notes I had taken; its pages were almost full, and I was going to have to get another one.

Eric flipped through the pages, and his cheeks coloured with embarrassment. "I am sorry," he said humbly. "I really thought you were angry with me and wanted to leave."

"I wasn't. So, are we clear now?"

Eric said, "Yes," and handed me my book back.

"Good. Now you know not to let your emotions get the better of you." He nodded bashfully and left the house, I presumed to go feed.

Later that night, he brought a woman home. When I saw her, I thought that he just wanted to spend the night with her. I went to leave the house, but Eric prevented me.

"Godric," he said, clutching at my arm to stop me. I turned to him.

"Yes, my child?"

"I would like to ask you something." He drew me back into the house to face the woman he had brought home. She was tall, taller than me but not so tall as Eric. Her hair was blonde, and it was artfully curled and held off her face by a band of material. She had deep blue eyes, and an olive complexion. She was a peculiar-looking Greek, I thought. I had believed them all to be dark hair, dark eyes, and golden skin. It took me a moment to realize that she looked very much like Eric, though female and with darker skin.

"What is it?" I inquired.

He looked nervous, and this made me wary. "I was wondering," he mumbled, "if I could have a companion."

I stood still, shocked, then burst out in laughter. "This is what you wanted to ask?"

My laughing appeared to surprise him. "Y-yes," he stuttered.

"Oh Eric," I said fondly. "Why do you even need to ask me? I have allowed you your companions before without complaint."

"But this is different."

That made me stand up straight and ask him brusquely, "Oh? And how so?"

"I want‒" he started, but then faltered. "I want her to stay with us."

I could feel my face harden. "Stay with us? Stay with us how?"

"As a vampire."

"Eric!" I snarled. "What are you saying?"

"It is okay," he said, trying to calm me. "I have glamoured her to ignore everything we say until I tell her to listen."

I felt a little better, but my nerves were still on edge. "Why are you asking me for this?"

Eric shuffled a little so he stood closer to the girl. "Because I want someone," he said. I tried to speak, but he cut me off. "I realize that there are times when you will not be around, and this does not mean you are leaving me to fend for myself, but I do feel that it might be better to have another person with us." I blinked several times. Even _I_ still sometimes used human actions, just to fill up space. "I know this sounds stupid," Eric persisted, "but I would like a companion, someone more permanent than the whores I hire. I thought that this might be a possibility." He sounded very hopeful.

I was still blinking, trying to gather my wits. "No," I said finally. "No, you cannot turn her."

Now it was Eric's turn to gather his wits. "What?" he asked, genuinely confused.

"You cannot turn her," I repeated.

"But this is just...I cannot believe..." he was having a difficult time finding the words. "Why not?" he demanded of me. "All I am asking for is to have someone else around, and you‒"

"Eric," I rasped, "listen to what I am saying: you cannot _turn_ her." He did not grasp my meaning. "Oh, for the sake of the gods," I groaned exasperatedly. "You can have her as your companion, _if she agrees to it_, but you cannot turn her into a vampire. She will be a human companion. Will that suffice?" I thought that the way he wanted to go about appropriating himself a companion was ill-devised, but I would let him go through with it anyways, for good or ill.

Eric mused over my compromise, then nodded blankly. "Why not as a vampire?" he wanted to know.

"Because," I said to him, "You cannot just make _anyone_ into a vampire. I do not want you to make yourself a vampire child and then come to regret it later. You should get to know the human first, see if she would make a good child for you."

"You did not wait to make me," he remarked sullenly.

"That is because there was no time to wait. Yours was a special circumstance." I flicked my eyes to the girl. "So, will you introduce us now?"

Eric brought the girl to stand in front of me. "Andromache," he whispered in her ear in Greek ‒ I had been teaching him. "You may pay attention now." The girl's blue eyes became more focused, and she glanced about her uneasily before settling her gaze on me. She had a strong personality: I could feel it radiating off of her.

"Hello," I said kindly to her, also in Greek. "Andromache, is it? That's a pretty name."

"Um, thank you...sir?" She was not sure how to refer to me.

"Godric is fine. I believe my friend has something he'd like to ask you."

Eric came forward and took Andromache's hand. She gave a little shiver of fright, but repressed it. "Do you remember me?" he asked her.

Andromache nodded haltingly. "I saw you at the tavern." Her voice was deep and mellifluous. "Where am I?"

"You are in our house," I answered, and as I talked to her, I just knew that things would not go over smoothly for Eric. I did consider warning him, but decided against it; perhaps it would be better for him this way in the long run.

Eric bent down so he was closer to her eye level. He had a bad habit of slouching, and being around me did not help that. "I have something I would like to ask you," he said to Andromache.

"What?"

"Well, I was wondering..." he looked to me to finish.

"Go on," I encouraged him. I was not going to do his work for him.

"I was wondering...if you'd like to live with us, here." The words jumbled together because he said it so fast, but Andromache understood him.

"What?" she said in utter amazement. Eric thought her amazement was a good sign; I knew better. "Are you being serious?"

His confidence faltered. "What do you mean?"

"This has to be some sort of jest," she said in disgust, "otherwise I cannot explain how you could ever think I would live with two strange men. Is this a kidnapping?"

"No! I just thought..."

"You must be sick and twisted to believe any decent person would just agree to this. I am not a common whore who will go around with any man. I have a good family and a good life at home." She stared Eric down, her strong will overpowering his now weak one. "And now, unless you are planning on keeping me here by force, I would like to leave."

I stepped aside to let her pass. This had to be one of _the_ most awkward and uncomfortable situations I had ever and would ever witness, but I could not feel sorry for Eric: he had brought it on himself. Eric remained standing where he was, his pride severely wounded, and when he went to say something I could see his fangs. So could Andromache. Her eyes widened, and she began to scream.

Before Eric could react, I reached over and snapped her neck. I let go of her and she crumpled, and Eric watched every movement with distress and horror. "We cannot afford to be weak, Eric," I said monotonously. "I keep telling you that you must stop letting yourself be ruled by your emotions, but you will not listen. If you cannot manage your emotions, you will have unexpected and unpleasant results, like these. Your fear of spending eternity alone is what caused this." I gestured at the corpse on the floor.

"Why did you do that?" he asked in a hushed voice.

"Because she would have attracted attention soon with her screaming."

"And why not just glamour her?" His anger was starting to build inside him, which greatly annoyed me.

"Because her will was very strong. If I had glamoured her to be quiet and to forget everything, there was a chance that she would have been able to fight it off later, and then she would tell others about the two strange men who tried to kidnap her. There are times when killing is necessary." I did not say to him that it would have been very, _very_ unlikely that the girl could have thrown off my glamour, and that my killing her had actually been quite _un_necessary. Sometimes the best lessons were the hardest ones to swallow.

"You knew," he whispered vehemently. "You knew she would refuse."

"Yes," I admitted.

"Then why did you let me do that? Why did you let me embarrass myself in front of her? Why did you not stop me, so you did not have to kill her?" His voice was trembling with rage.

"Because you need to learn. Eric, there are certain ways to go about these things. You did it the improper way, and look how it turned out. You cannot snatch people from their homes and expect them to be glad of it. If you want a companion, you must let them come to you."

He was shaking his head. "I do not understand. Why did you not tell me this before?"

"If I had told you that the way you had planned to take a companion was the incorrect way to do it, you might not have listened. Now you know for certain that it was wrong. If you want to find a true companion, you must attract them to you. Let them _want_ to be near you, _want_ to stay with you."

"That is not what you did with me," he said bitterly.

"I did not have to," I stated matter-of-factly, and left it at that. I knew he wanted a proper answer, but I was in no mood to give it.

"You know," Eric said after a brief silence, "you have a very disagreeable way of teaching me things. You make me feel absolutely pathetic and weak, like I am a simpleminded child."

I could not coddle his wounded pride; it was better he learned things now rather than later. "That is because you _are_ a stupid child, and like a stupid child you must learn in order to become less stupid. I have spent a thousand years learning the lessons I am trying to teach you, but I cannot just tell them to you: you must experience them and learn from your successes and mistakes."

"Even if it costs me my dignity? Or someone their life?" Oh yes, he was hurt and upset with me. Which, by this point, was becoming very typically Eric.

"We kill people every night; if that is what it costs, then yes. And do not feel so ashamed: everyone makes mistakes."

"You do not," he jabbed spitefully.

I had another good long laugh at Eric's expense. He was full of jokes tonight, even if he wasn't aware that he was telling them. "I have made my share of mistakes. I still make mistakes to this day."

"Night," he corrected me, as I had often corrected him.

"Case-in-point. The goal for us is to learn from our mistakes. I actually made a mistake much like yours when I was younger."

"You did?" He was curious now, though it was still laced with his anger. "Wait, how do you remember this? I thought you forgot most things."

I shrugged. "I have no idea, but I do remember making the same mistake. I do not know if I ever told you, but my Maker killed himself immediately after he turned me. He set himself on fire, and left me to learn everything I am teaching you by myself. It was a very difficult period," I reminisced. "When I was young, maybe a decade or so after I had been turned, I felt alone, far more alone than you can imagine. I saw a little boy, around seven or eight, and I wanted him so badly, so I took him and tried to befriend him. Because my Maker had left me, and I had encountered no other vampires, I did not know how to turn someone, so I had no thoughts of turning the boy. I only wanted a friend, and even as a human the boy would have been adequate. But all he did was cry for his mother and father, and it hurt me to hear that, so I decided to let him go. I could not stomach the thought of killing him. That day, while I was sleeping, the boy had run back home and told his parents about me. He led them to where I had kept him, and they burned everything to the ground. Lucky for me I was _in_ the ground, and they did not find me, but it was a very close call."

Eric was astonished. I seemed so wise and knowing to him that it did not seem possible that I could make mistakes. But I had made plenty in my long life. "So you see now why I must teach you, even if it costs you your pride, or another person's life? If I do not, then you might make a mistake that could kill us both. Unlike me, you have someone who can mostly fix your blunders, but you still need to learn."

Eric said something incoherently to himself, then grudgingly acknowledged that I was right. "But do not expect me to be happy about it," he added.

"I do not. I never was, either." I remembered that the body was still on the floor. Eric looked down when I did, and his face became, if it was possible, even glummer. "My error came from letting my emotions get the better of me, as did yours," I said significantly. "Control them, and everything becomes much easier."

He had no response to that piece of wisdom. His anger still seethed inside of him, but I could do nothing else to quell it. "What should we do with this?" he asked me, crouching close to Andromache's body.

"What we always do: get rid of it."

* * *

For a time after that, Eric returned to obeying every little thing I asked of him without any complaints, though with some reluctance, like he had done before we reached Greece. I had expected to be happy about that, but I could feel his anger constantly simmering beneath the surface, an ever-present anomaly within our relatively peaceful lives. He was bitter about the control I had over his life and his decisions. But above all things, Eric was furious with himself. He was angry that he was too weak to leave me; he hated that he felt like an idiot whenever he was with me; and he abhorred that his emotions always got the better of him, no matter how many times I tried to help him control them. I explained to him that these things took time, and eventually he would no longer need my help for anything, but Eric resented feeling inferior, to anyone, more than anything else. He was a very conflicted man, and it was the type of conflict that only Eric himself could resolve; I could only watch and wait for the eventual outcome of his struggle.

Not long after the death of Andromache, Eric and I packed up and left Greece. I was not passionate about it anymore, and Eric just wanted to get away. We started moving, and this time we had no destination. I had thought about maybe heading over to Italy, but neither of us felt any excitement for that idea. So I told him we would walk, and keep walking until we could walk no more. We would go north, to get out of the Mediterranean basin, and then go wherever the winds would take us. And so we trudged along, stopping here and there to sleep and feed, but never settling in one place for more than a few nights. Eric's anger began to dissipate during our trek, his internal struggle finally came to an end, and the result was a more self-aware being: Eric acknowledged that whatever I was teaching him would be best for him in the long run, and that giving up control to me now would result in him gaining control later. And more importantly, he realized that it was his precarious emotional state that had caused him suffering, not just me. It had taken some effort, but he started to understand my reasoning for wanting him to manage his emotions: if he gave into every feeling he had, his life would be one of chaos and disaster, and he would find himself in a desperate situation that he could not escape; if he allowed himself to feel every emotion, he would be in constant agony from all the pain and death he would cause others; and he would never be free again, instead bonded by guilt and doomed to an eternity of misery. Of course, there were times when he could not help himself, when his feelings would be so ardent that he could not curb them, but he tried to, and that was the significant part. This directionless, ambling journey from Greece that we had begun was a journey of revelations for Eric. I watched in awe as Eric changed in front of me from the bumbling, uncertain child to a more knowledgeable and assured adult. He still had much more to learn, but now he was more willing to be taught.

After many long nights of travelling, we had almost reached the northern border of Bulgaria. We had to stop because the sun would be rising in an hour or so, and Eric was hungry. We were close to Pleven, so I told Eric to go into the town to feed.

"Are you not coming as well?" he asked of me.

"No," I replied, sitting on the ground. "I find I am not hungry." I shooed him away, and once he left I got up again and sauntered off, out into a nearby open field. The sky was clear, and the moon was nearly full; summer was at its height, and the air was heavy with the scent of lavender and grass. I found it very relaxing, and I spread myself out on the field and looked at the stars. I searched for the familiar constellations, found them quickly, and then tried to see if I could find any other shapes in the night sky. I waited for Eric to return, but was in no hurry to have him back.

A light footstep rustled the grass to the east of me. At first I thought it was Eric, but then I could hear a heartbeat; perhaps Eric had brought me someone back? But there was more than one heartbeat and pair of footsteps: I could hear over sixty people, and they were coming from all around me. I stood up and watched attentively as they approached me. There were both men and women, and they moved cautiously, as if I were a ferocious beast they had come upon. They ranged in ages, heights, and colouring, but they all had the same determined glint in their eyes that made me suspicious of them. I stood perfectly still as they formed a solid ring of bodies around me. My fists clenched, but I kept them at my sides.

"May I ask what is going on?" I had to make an effort to sound courteous. "Can I help you?"

"Demon," snarled a man to my left. He spoke Romanian, so I do not think he understood what I had asked before. I turned to him, and the others around him gave him some space. He stepped forward, shoulders set, and glared at me malevolently. "You're coming with us." His voice was very gruff; he sounded much like my father, if I could remember correctly.

"Excuse me?" I asked him, also in Romanian, which was disconcerting to some of the people but not to this man. It was a good thing I had decided long ago that learning different languages was a useful way to spend my time, and I always tried to keep up with any language changes so that my dialect would be as modern as possible.

"You heard me. You're coming with us."

"And why ever should I do that?"

The man reached for something at his belt. "Because you don't have a choice." There was a sliding noise, and his right hand came away with a long knife; his left held a coil of rope. So this was not to be a friendly encounter; that was a pity, for them at least.

"You cannot expect me to come along willingly," I stated, this time speaking to all of them. Some mumbled angrily, but most remained silent.

"You can't hurt us all," the man, who was apparently their speaker, rebuked.

I laughed quietly. "Yes, I can." I dashed forward and ploughed into the speaker man. I dug my fingers into the flesh of his throat and ripped it clean out. Many hands grabbed at me then, and I fought them off, sometimes pulling arms from sockets. Screams ripped the air, but as soon as I killed one person another replaced them, all piling on top of me. I was being weighted down, but I refused to be taken. I bit and tore and fought as best I could, and it looked like I was going to get free, until my skin started burning. I yelled, and tried to get rid of it, but the burning remained. The people that were left backed away from me, and through the pain I could see that someone had thrown silver on me. These people had a silver net! How could they have known that silver would hurt me? But I had no time to ask questions because a big man came nearer, holding a large wooden club which he swung and brought down on my head. I saw darkness.


	7. Chapter 7

Warning: This chapter has more sexual content than my previous chapters, so the rating is higher (closer to an M/MA rather than a T). Please don't say I didn't warn you :)

**Chapter Seven:**

I woke the next night in the ground, my hands bound behind me with silver chains, and blood caked in my hair. The pain from the chains was excruciating, but more frightening was the thought that I would be imprisoned underground for the rest of eternity ‒ the chains effectively prevented me from being able to dig myself out. After long minutes of lying there trying in vain to escape, a hysteric scream wormed its way out of my throat. The sound died as soon as it left my mouth, muffled by the earth, but still more poured out. I was panicking, and I twisted myself every which way in the hopes of getting free, but I could not. I tossed and turned, and tried to pull my hands from their silver bindings, but all I did was burn away more of the skin on my wrists. I heard footsteps walking above me, and I screamed louder, hoping to get their attention, and when I heard a shovel digging into the soil I nearly wept with relief. I was so desperate to get out that I did not even think about who could have possibly known where I was.

The dirt shifted on my face as they got closer to me, and a moment later I could see the stars. I cried out with joy, before several sets of rough hands grabbed me and yanked me up. When I saw them, everything that had happened last night came back to me: these men were the ones who had captured me in Bulgaria. Before I could move or say anything, one of the men threw the silver net on me again, and picked me up. They were taking me someplace, and they obviously wanted me alive, otherwise they would not have buried me in the ground. But how did they know to keep me out of the sun? How did they know about silver? Somehow or other, these men, these Romanian thugs, knew about vampires, and wanted me for some purpose. I could not fight them because it was all I could do to not pass out from the pain of my burning flesh. The wrists had been bad enough: this was all over my body. I lay as still as possible, so as to not exacerbate my fresh wounds, and let them take me wherever they wanted: it was not like I had a choice.

Their journey was a long one, made longer still by the fact that they could not travel during the day. Every day they buried me, and every night they dug me up and wrapped me in silver. Everything started to blur together in a haze of darkness, rough hands, and pain, unbearable pain. I did not even know how many nights it took to get to their destination, I just knew when we reached it because the men took the net off me and tossed me into a cage barred with silver, inside a small, crude shelter. They also took the chains off my wrists, and then shut the cage door and locked it.

Of course, the first thing I did was try to rip apart the bars of the cage, only to find my hands smouldering and in agony. I snatched them away quickly, and looked about my cage. Everything was silver, even the flooring of the cage. The only reason why my feet were not on fire was because of a small piece of wood set into the floor. Even if I had wanted to pry it out, maybe to throw at someone, I could not, because somehow the Romanians had managed to sink the wood into the silver, so any edge I might have grabbed at was actually _in_ the silver. Smart people. But how did they have so much silver? From what I had seen, they looked very poor. But I could not concern myself with their wealth; my only concern should be my freedom.

As I studied the cage, I noticed that I was alone. Eric was not with me. That meant that either Eric had not been caught, he was dead, or he was being held separately. I did not know which was more probable, though I hoped that he was not imprisoned like me. I felt a pang of sorrow for Eric, if he was still free, for likely thinking that I had abandoned him, this time for real. I hoped that, when he came back and saw me gone, he would have followed my trail to the field, where he would have seen the blood and severed limbs, and was now trying to find me. Of course, if he had been captured or killed, this would all be wishful thinking on my part. I did hope he was all right though.

The door to the shelter that held my prison opened, and a huge burly man walked in. He was not one of the men who had carried me here. He came up to the cage and grinned toothlessly at me through its slats as he put his hands around the silver bars, almost like he was daring me to try to do the same thing. I stayed on my piece of wood. The man brought out a small key from a string attached to his belt and dangled it in front of me.

"Do you want this?" he teased. When I said nothing, his grin faded and was replaced by a hard glare. "The god would like to see you now."

Now _that_ got a reaction from me. "God? What god?"

"Our god," he said as if I were an imbecile. He stuck the key in the lock but did not turn it. He grabbed the silver net from off the floor, where it had been tossed, and held it up in front of the cage, then turned the key and opened the door. He had it held in such a way that I could not slip past without being ensnared in the net, which was what he had planned. Though I could not avoid the silver, I could kill the man holding it. I ran forward, straight at the man and into the net, and bowled him over. I reached through the links in the net with my fingers and grabbed his hair and his shoulder, and twisted his head off. Hot blood spurted into my face, but the pleasure I would have usually taken in such a thing was greatly diminished by the silver setting my skin ablaze. I rolled over onto my back, which I should not have done because then the silver netting fell onto my face, and I was blinded by the pain. I tried to open my mouth to scream, but the silver felt like it had melted my lips together. All I could do was lie on the floor, writhing.

Footsteps stopped by my head, and the person bent over and lifted the silver off my face. My eyes had been closed in an effort to block out the pain, which never works, by the way, but they opened now to see who had taken away a small portion of my torture. It was a young boy, perhaps twelve, and he stared at me with wide green eyes filled with interest.

"Are you the sacrifice?" he asked me eagerly.

"Sacrifice for what?"

"Our god. He likes your kind."

I did not know how to answer. I assumed I was the sacrifice, based on how I was being treated, but what kind of god demands vampires as a sacrifice? "How do you know about my kind?" I inquired of the boy.

He frowned in what I thought was disappointment, though I did not know what he was disappointed about. "My people all know about your kind. We are told by the elders about the demons who wander at night to feed off the living. They teach us how to recognize you, how to defend ourselves against you, and how to kill you."

"Which would explain the silver," I said to myself, but the boy thought I spoke to him.

"Yes, and why they put you underground during the day. Our god likes live sacrifices, so they did not want you to die on the way here."

"Live sacrifices?" I cackled gleefully, or at least as gleefully as I could while in agony. "How ironic!"

The boy's frown deepened. "What is ironic?"

I was not sure if he meant he did not know the meaning of 'ironic,' or whether he did not understand the irony of the situation, but I was not going to define words for a little boy. "Your god wants live sacrifices, but I am not alive. Didn't your elders tell you that? I am undead, which means I am more dead than alive, and so, much less like a live sacrifice." I was rambling on, but I needed some distraction from the pain.

The boy apparently did not like my answer, or perhaps my attitude, because he kicked the silver netting back onto my face and left. I heard him yelling for someone, but I was too consumed with my torture to pay attention. Another man came in, followed by the boy, and he flipped me over and looped a silver chain tightly around my wrists and ankles. So much silver! He picked me up and carried me outside, then deposited me on the ground and removed the netting. I actually sighed audibly with the respite. Though the silver on my hands and feet still hurt, compared to the net they were a little slice of paradise. I stayed on the ground, and I saw that a large number of people were gathered about me, many more than had attacked me in the field. This was a full village of people. I sat there, watching them watching me, when a growing sense of dread filled me. I looked behind me and saw people shifting aside as something came through. They all murmured reverently as this thing moved past them, and I knew without a doubt that this was their god.

When the god broke through the crowd, I had expected to see a magnificent, fearsome creature who could give pleasure to its friends and pain to its foes. What I saw was actually a vampire, which was a bit of a letdown. The vampire was a tallish man, with long curls of black hair and glittering green eyes. He was strong, I could feel, but not drastically stronger than I was. I think that shocked him, because when his eyes found mine he missed a step, but he regained himself and continued on smoothly. He came and stood close to me, gave me a large, false smile, and then spoke emphatically to his people.

"My dear faithful friends," he began in a booming voice, "I would like to thank you for the sacrifice you have brought for me on this divine night. I am only too glad to help you protect your village, and in return all I ask is a little blood. This blood here," he put his hand on top of my head, "will do very nicely."

The villagers all threw up their hands and cheered loudly. The vampire, sorry, the _god_, beamed brightly at them all. He pointed a finger at one man, then another, and another, until he had chosen fourteen men, and those fourteen men walked forward, eager and with eyes full of glory. They stood close to us, but dared not touch the _god_. They paid little attention to me, instead staring at the _god _like he was their saviour.

The _god_ ran a fingernail down his chest, making a small cut. Blood welled up, and he dabbed his finger in it, then dotted each man's forehead with it. One of them looked like he might faint from pure bliss.

The _god_ was facing the men, but he spoke loudly enough so that all the villagers could hear. "These brave men have been chosen from among you all because of the great deed they have done. They have undertaken the dangerous journey to find me a suitable sacrifice, and have survived where others have fallen. They have earned this right, and on this night we will all bear witness to their rise to greatness!" The crowd cheered wildly again, stomping their feet and patting each other on the back. The _god_ raised his hands for quiet, then pointed at me.

"This creature, this vile demon, is a blight on the purity of this world. He is an abomination that has given up all human compassion and honour so that he might have an eternity to wreak havoc on innocent people. He kills your parents, your children, your friends, so that he might survive to continue his evil ways. He would kill you all now if he could, even me." Everyone gasped, and a few stared at me as if they would have liked to stake me this instant. "This...this _vampire_, deserves no compassion from us, for he would never give _us_ compassion. He deserves only dishonour, pain, and death. These fine men, brave soldiers all, have been chosen to punish our sacrifice, and may we all pray to the gods that they have the strength to persecute the demon sufficiently." Instead of cheers, all went silent, except for the sound of the fourteen men as they removed their clothes. Once all their clothing was discarded, they all stood proud and fully erect, in the anatomical sense, so excited were they to serve their god. A woman slinked forward and removed the little clothing I had been wearing, so there were fifteen naked bodies circled by a sea of clothed people. I knew, without a doubt, what was to come, and I tried to prepare myself mentally for it.

The _god_ nodded to the first man, and he took his place behind me. Before he began, he put a collar around my throat, thankfully not of silver, which was hooked to a chain he held in his fist. He yanked the chain tight so that I was forced onto all fours, and then he entered me roughly. It was painful, but not as unbearable as the silver manacles. He thrust into me a few times before spilling his seed, then pulled out and let the next man take his place. Each many did his _godly_ duty, raping me raw until the _god _was satisfied. As the last man pulled out, the _god_ shed his clothes and crouched in front of me so that no one else could hear what he wanted to say to me. He showed me a small knife he was carrying, which he spun between his fingers.

"Why are you doing this?" I pleaded weakly, my voice scratchy from the pressure of the collar on my throat.

"Because I can." He passed the knife to his other hand and continued spinning it.

"But you are a vampire, like me."

"Maybe." He stroked the blade against my face, but did not cut me. "But I want power, and my way to power is through vampire blood. Yours especially; I have never had one as old as you before. Usually they only capture younglings."

"How did you find me?"

He shrugged like it was not important. "I had heard rumours of a spree of killings in northern Bulgaria, and all the bodies were drained of blood. So I sent my faithful followers to capture you and bring you here."

"But that was not me," I said earnestly. "I have not killed anyone in northern Bulgaria."

The knife changed hands again. "It does not matter. Any vampire will do for me."

"And for your followers?"

He laughed obnoxiously. "To them all vampires are evil. Whether you were the one who killed those people or not, they would still bring you to me to be sacrificed."

I wriggled in the chains, squirming from the pain of the silver and the rapes. "Why are you encouraging these people to believe that vampires are evil? You are one!"

"I needed a reason to convince these people to obey me, so I played on their fear of vampires. Since they knew all about vampires, I had to convince them that I was a god of the night, rather than a vampire, and that I wanted to help protect them from the demons that walk at night, in return for a blood sacrifice."

"So you force them to hunt down vampires for you." This whole scenario was rather twisted.

"Not originally, no. It started out with humans, ones who were evil, or so I persuaded these people to believe. Then one time I went out to hunt with them, as I occasionally do, and we caught a vampire drinking from a human. I killed it, and decided to drink its blood, and the surge of power I got from it was intoxicating. And ever since then I have been sending these people after 'demon' vampires, to bring them home to me as payment for protecting their village, which does not really need protecting. But that is enough chatting for now. I must finish their ritual." The _god_ cut off our conversation and stood up. He swung his hand out over the entire crowd to command their attention.

"Good people! It is time for the god to punish the demon." He stood behind me, like the others had, holding the chain tightly in one fist and the knife in the other. "But the god demands more than any man: he demands a small sacrifice of blood in order to fulfill his act of punishing." He pressed his blade into the skin over my spine, and slid it slowly down, opening up my skin to let my blood spill forth. The _god_ leaned forward and sucked at the cut, drinking up as much blood as he could.

"Why don't you just kill me now and drink _all_ my blood?" I suggested angrily.

He stopped licking my spine. "That is not the ritual. Tonight is the rape and a small blood sacrifice, and tomorrow night is when I will kill you." He lapped at my blood some more.

"And how do you stop them from knowing you are a vampire? I mean, when your fangs come out and you bite me, I believe that fits all their criteria for a vampire, no?"

The _god_ gave a sharp pull on the chain, jerking my collar. "My dear boy, I am not going to bite you, though I do not doubt you would enjoy that. No, I am going to slit your pretty little throat and spill all your blood into a bowl, from which I will consume your power. Then I will carve open your chest and rip out your heart, cut off your head, and set it all, body, heart, head, on fire. Then I will spread your ashes over the village. These people see fire as purifying, and they believe your purified remains will help protect them." He suddenly thrust powerfully into me and I could not hold back a strangled yell. That pleased the _god_, because he pounded into me harder and faster, hurting me more severely than any of the men. He went at me for a much longer duration, and by the time he was finished I was exhausted, sore, and abused. I felt dirty and angry and humiliated, and the worst part was that I could do nothing to repay him back in kind, because as soon as the _god_ pulled out of me the fourteen men who had been chosen covered me with the infamous silver net again and transported me back to my silver cage. I could not even lie down properly because the piece of wood was too small. I could only sit cross-legged and hope that I would not fall over onto the silver floor when I passed out at the sun's rising.


	8. Chapter 8

**Warning: this chapter has more violence in it than my previous chapters, so the rating is higher (close to an M rather than a T).

**Chapter Eight:**

The scent of charred flesh filled my nostrils as I regained consciousness. I could not tell where it was coming from at first, until the rest of my senses caught up and pain exploded through me. I had done exactly as I had not wanted to: I had sprawled out when the sun rose, and my right cheek was burnt almost completely away, from having spent an entire day in contact with silver. My right leg, foot, arm, and a large portion of the right side of my torso were scorched as well, but my cheek was the worst. I tried to touch my face, to feel the extent of the damage, but as soon as my raw skin felt the pressure of my fingers the pain tripled, and I had to smother a scream as I huddled on the wood, the only safe place for me now. Wetness spread over my cheeks, and I realized I was crying. The red tears rolled through the maze of my eroded, withered flesh, but surprisingly they did not sting. I wiped them away from the good side of my face and wondered what I looked like; I was surely a grotesque sight. In time it would heal and I would be perfect again, but I had no time. Tonight was the night I was to die.

The man who had come with the boy the night before came back again tonight. When he was close enough to see me, he involuntarily took a step back, disgusted by what he saw. So I _was _terrible to look at.

"What?" I snarled. "You must have seen similar burns before. We have little control over our bodies when we sleep, and it is almost impossible for us to wake up, so I am certain this happens a lot."

He swallowed heavily and nodded. "It still shocks me every time, though."

I turned my body so that he could only see the flawless side. "Surely you are not feeling sympathy for the devil."

The man stepped nearer to my cage and peered through the bars. "Never," he spat.

"I thought so." He bent down and picked up the silver net. "No, please," I asked, trying not to sound like I was begging, which of course I was. "Give me the hand and ankle chains, but please, not the net. I promise I will not try to kill you."

The man wavered for a second, but he strengthened his resolve and tightened his grip in the silver mesh. "I do not believe in the promises of demons."

I did not argue with him; he would not listen to me anyways. He unlocked the door, and unlike the first man who had tried to get me last night, he threw the net on me instead of waiting for me to come to him. I tried to keep the silver off my already burnt skin, but it hurt all the same. He picked me up and carried me out the door, same as he had done the night before. In order to keep my mind off the awful pain blazing through me, I concentrated on the landscape around me. It was a small village, full of dirty, putrid Romanians. Their houses were mainly mouldy tents held up with one pole in the middle, and a few small wooden shacks were scattered about in no organized fashion. Mangy dogs roamed the narrow pathways between the shelters, slavering and growling as I passed them by. I must smell like dinner to them, all this smoking meat. There weren't many people around ‒ they were probably all already gathered and waiting for me; but I did spot an old woman sitting at a small cook fire, stirring a large pot. She smiled at me sinisterly, and it was all the more horrendous due to her rotting teeth, the few she had left anyways. She reminded me of something had been wondering about.

"What about the women?" I asked the man carrying me.

"What do you mean?" he growled. I actually hadn't expected him to respond at all.

"There were women in the band that had captured me. Why did they not get to punish me as well?"

He grunted before he answered. "Women cannot punish a demon like men can. And your punishment is not over yet," was his reply.

"Oh." I hung limply over the man's left shoulder. I wanted to kill him so I could try to escape, but I could not budge because the silver held me severely in place. He continued walking for a few minutes longer, until, as I had suspected, he carried me to the same place I had been last night, and the same crowd was there. If it was possible, they seemed even more restless and eager and anticipatory than they had yesterday. It should not surprise me, though: tonight they got to watch me die.

The man put me down and took off the net, but instead of forcing me onto all fours, he bound my hands and ankles together behind my back with another chain, which forced my chest to arch forward. It was a more dramatic position for slitting throats, I supposed.

Again like last night, I could hear the _god_ approach before I could see him. Adoring whispers surrounded him in the crowd, and the people parted like water around a rock. I did not bother to look at him this time, for I knew what to, disappointedly, expect. He was nothing but an egotistical, power-hungry vampire, and not even an impressive one to look at. Eric was more impressive than him, though I would not tell the _god_ that.

Tonight the _god_ wore open-chested robes of a very soft-looking material in bright red. The colour made his pale skin seem to glow, making him look more unnatural, which is likely what he had planned on. He came to me with his fake grin on his smug face, and I could tell that he was enjoying the ruined picture of my visage and the obvious pain I was feeling. I wanted nothing more than to cleave him open from groin to sternum in front of his worshippers, but it was impossible. This feeling of utter helplessness was starting to get to me ‒ but, on the positive side, it was not like I would have to deal with it much longer.

The _god_ bent down and grabbed my chin, holding my head steady so he could examine me better. His eyes trailed over my face and down my body to my feet, always staying on the burned skin. His cheeks flushed ever so slightly and his lips parted, as if he were sexually aroused by the sight of my marred flesh. He probably was. He pressed his nose into my shoulder and inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of seared meat, then drew back an inch or two. His fangs were down, but he flicked them back up before he turned to his people, so that they would not see him for what he really was.

He held up his hands to the sky, as if he were beseeching a higher power. The villagers watched his silent prayer mutely, not wanting to disturb the _god_ as he did a _godly_ thing. A few of them gazed upwards with him, but most were fixated on their earthbound _god_.

"My devoted people," the _god_ thundered suddenly, shattering the still air and causing a few of the villagers to jump. "Tonight is the night. Tonight I take the sacrifice that you have generously offered me so that you will be in the good graces of this god, and through me in the good graces of _all_ gods. Tonight I will take the blood of an evil, demonic being, and through my consumption make it pure, so that I might use it to protect my faithful followers." He lowered his hands to point at the crowd, encompassing them all in his _grace_. I heard a woman giggle in the back, but other than her there was no noise ‒ this was different from the night before, where everyone shouted after nearly every word from the _god's_ lips. It was more serious tonight.

The _god_ gestured for someone to come forth, and a young girl, a mere child, went to the_ god_, carrying something in her skinny arms. The _god_ took it and uncoiled it slowly, slithering it on the ground for all to see and understand. It was a whip.

"Now," the _god_ said, "there are those amongst you who feel that the vampire should suffer still more." He twitched the whip suggestively, and almost everyone at the gathering murmured their agreement for this statement. "Are there any amongst you who feel the need to personally punish the vampire?" Numerous people shouted 'yes,' and the _god_ held out the whip for the first person to take. A muscular man went to pick it up, but a short, wiry woman elbowed him out of the way and snatched it up first. She snapped the whip experimentally at the ground by me, and I flinched automatically. The _god_ sneered, but the woman did not: she kept her face rigid, like she was determined to bleed every drop of evil out of me.

"Remember," the _god_ yelled before the woman began, "while all of you deserve to punish this demon, each person must do so quickly, for the entire ceremony must be finished before dawn." The people nodded, then turned their attention to the woman as she drew back her arm and then flicked it forward. The whip cracked, and the woman split open a sliver of my charred skin, which hurt more than anything else she could possibly do. The intense agony spread through me, but I refused to scream. I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing that.

The woman snapped again, hitting my burnt flesh a second time. "This is for my husband," she hissed, drawing the whip back for a third strike. "This is for my son," she cried as she hit me again, and she repeated this mantra as she struck me over and over. When she finished, my teeth were gritted and sweat beaded on my brow, but I had not screamed. I was proud of myself for that, until I remembered that she was only the first of many more to come.

The next to take the whip was the muscular man who had tried to be first. Like the woman, he whipped only my burnt side, and his lashes were much more painful. And each person after that whipped only my burnt side, so that by the end of it I had nearly bit my tongue in half to keep myself from screaming. But I did not scream; I had won that much.

When the last person punished me, an elderly man, about three-quarters of the villagers had whipped me. The only ones who hadn't were children and, rather unexpectedly, the man who had carried me out of my prison. He had watched carefully, but he never once made a move to grab for the whip. I almost felt grateful towards him.

By the final lash, I was shivering violently as I tried to repress the relentless waves of sickening pain that rocked my body. While I hadn't screamed, tears had poured from my eyes that had been squeezed tightly shut through the whole ordeal. When I finally opened them, I had to blink away a film of red before I could see properly. The god was gazing at me in a way that could only be described as lustful, and I looked at the ground around me to see that it was drenched in my blood. If I could have collapsed, I would have, but having my hands and feet bound together prevented me from doing so. I was out of sorts from the lashings, and I did not even notice when someone had handed the _god_ a long-bladed ceremonial knife, until he held it in front of my face. "Now it is time for you to die," he purred. He gave me a secret smile, fangs and all, then hid them to speak to the humans.

"It is time, my friends, the moment we have all been avidly awaiting. It is time for us to send the demon to his final resting ground, and thereby rid the earth of his foul influence." He picked up a huge, metal bowl that had been laid at his feet, and just as he placed the knife on my throat and I resigned myself to my death, I felt a familiar presence nearby. Eric. But he would be too late, unless I stalled the ceremony. I had to delay it.

"Do you people not realize," I yelled hoarsely, "that your _god_ is not a god?" Everything went deathly still. The _god_ pulled back in bewilderment, and a hint of fear flickered through him. I could feel all their gazes boring into me ‒ I had their attention, at least.

"It is true," I continued. "Your god is a fraud. He is no better than me, for he is nothing but a gluttonous, lazy, deceitful...vampire!" A few gasps could be heard, and someone shouted out, "You're despicable, you wicked demon! How dare you try to dirty the god with your filthy words!"

"These 'filthy' words are only the truth. Your god is a vampire, the very thing you are taught to kill. How can you not recognize it?"

"He's not a vampire," someone else yelled. "He is a god of the night, and a very wise and kind god."

"He is only very wise because you are all so very _un_wise." As I said that, angry whispers began to buzz around me, and it sounded more like I was in a serpent's den than amongst human beings. The villagers pressed forward determinedly, trying to get to me so that they might kill me, but the _god_ fended them off.

"Do not listen to these poisonous words," he cried out imploringly. He was a very good actor, I had to admit. "He is only trying to cause dissent, and you all know better than to take a demon's words to heart." The crowd backed off reluctantly and returned to silence. "I do not heed the vampire's words, so I am not bothered by them. You should not be either. He is trying to agitate you in the hopes that we will be distracted from sacrificing him, but I see through his ploy. He will die tonight, and by my hand, the hand of a god!"

He put the knife to my throat again, but I had gotten the time I needed. Eric was there, at the outer edge of the crowd, and he was livid. The _god_ felt him at that moment too, and he lifted his head as he tried to grasp what it was he was sensing.

A woman's scream startled the rest of the villagers, and I could see her body fly up into the air as Eric threw her aside. More screams followed as Eric tore through the crowd to reach me. When I saw his blonde head I tried to catch his attention, to direct him towards me so he that he could try to rip off my manacles, but as soon as he saw the other vampire he went for him instead.

I yelled out, "Eric, no!" but it was no use. Eric had already leapt onto the _god_, knocking the knife out of his hand, and was trying to latch his teeth onto the _god's_ neck. But the _god_ was stronger, and he peeled Eric off him and threw Eric across the village gathering place, over my head and into the crowd behind me. People cried out as they fell beneath Eric, the force of the throw enough to break their bones. Eric rolled off the people and to his feet with an inhuman roar, and tore off towards the _god_ again. Everything was chaos, with humans running everywhere trying to escape the battle and the two vampires snapping at each other with teeth and claws. I was knocked over as the villagers ran into me, and then they ran _over_ me in their haste to get away. My ribs crack from the pressure of dozens of feet pounding on top of me, but I could not do anything to stop them. One person tripped as his foot got caught in my chains, but he got up quickly and sped off. I could still hear the other two vampires duelling, and as I struggled to get to my knees I saw that in the wild stampede, the key bearer, the man who had carried me last night and tonight, dropped his string of keys across the clearing. I crept towards them, all the while keeping an eye on the fight. Eric was trying his best to kill the _god_, but he was slowly losing. He was barely managing to defend himself from the _god's_ fatal strikes, and I feared that any moment I would lose forever the young child I had created. That thought consumed me, and I hurriedly manoeuvred myself so I could grab the keys and fit them into the locks on my chains. It took multiple keys to unlock the many silver chains on me, but when they were off it felt so good to be completely free of silver. I stood up swiftly, which was a mistake on my part because I immediately fell down again. I was so damaged from the silver burnings and the whippings and the bleeding that my muscles could not support my weight. Despair threatened to drown me, despair that I would lose Eric and then my own life to this duplicitous vampire. I rocked back and forth on the ground, when I heard a whimper beside me. A woman had been pushed down some time during the frenzied scramble to get away, and I could see that a few of her bones had been broken, and her eyes were closed. I looked at her with pity, but I knew I needed her blood to heal. I crawled to her and cradled her head in my hands. Her eyes fluttered open, but there was no recognition in them. I almost apologized to her for what I was about to do, but then I remembered that she had been one of the people who had whipped me. Without another thought, I sank my teeth into her neck and drank deeply from her. I could hear her heartbeat slowing, and I drank until her heart beat no more. Her blood coursed through me, giving me strength and healing some of my wounds, but I needed more blood. I looked around for any other people who were alive, and drained four others of their blood. After the fifth villager, I felt better. Not fully healed, not even close, but enough that I could ignore the pain and help Eric.

A loud shout caught my ear, and I turned to see that the _god_ had broken Eric's left femur, and Eric stumbled. The _god_ caught Eric in a binding grip and aggressively bit Eric's throat. Eric struggled to free himself, but the _god_ had him too tightly, and Eric weakened as his blood was devoured by the other vampire. Rage kindled in me, and I picked up the ceremonial knife that the _god_ had dropped when Eric first attacked him. I snuck up behind the _god_, who was so busy with his meal that he did not even notice me, at least not until he felt the edge of the knife against the back of his neck. He let go of Eric, who sank to the ground, and turned to me, blood running off his chin. Eric's blood. I lowered the tip of the knife, and the _god_ smirked at me.

"Not going to kill me, then? Not strong enough?"

"Oh, I most certainly am. For both questions. I just want to do it in a specific way." His smirk died, and he dodged to the right in the hopes of getting around me so that he could kill me. But I was prepared for him. When you study creatures, any creatures, for a long period of time, you can tell how they are going to move by noticing the slightest shift in their stance, and when they are desperate for something, such as my blood, they makes mistakes and are easier to read. When the _god_ feinted, my knife was ready to meet him, and I caught him with its blade at his groin, and sliced it upwards to his sternum, exposing his innards to the night air. The _god_ inhaled sharply, from pain and surprise, and his hands went to the gash to hold his organs in their place. This kind of injury will not kill a vampire, but it does hurt, and it can take a long time to heal, especially if the organs spill out or someone takes them out. Of course, if the heart is removed then the vampire dies. I pushed the god to the ground and smacked his hands away from his wound, so that I could force my own hand inside him. I fumbled around in his innards, searching for his heart, and when I touched it the _god_ froze beneath me, and I could smell his sudden panic.

"Please," he entreated, "please do not kill me."

I caressed his un-beating heart gently, for vampire hearts do not beat like a human's would, and he trembled terribly under that touch. I could see sweat on his forehead, and felt it was repayment for the sweating he had caused me. "I would _love_ to be able to hurt you like you had hurt me, but I am very tired of this whole thing. I just want to leave this place."

"Then leave," he stammered. "Leave, and I promise I will not bother you again."

I chuckled at his sudden change in personality. "You've become quite insignificant, haven't you? Very pathetic."

He glanced at my burns and lash marks. "You did as well," he said bluntly. "You begged, too."

I swiftly leaned forward so that my nose touched his as I snarled, "Do not remind me," and then just as swiftly pulled back. I took a calming breath before I continued, "And besides, regardless of how pathetic I became, you will die a quivering weakling, whereas I will have time to regain myself."

"But my men will‒"

"Never try to hunt me down," I cut off.

"You do not know that." He was trying to rebuild his ego.

"I will make sure of it," I promised him, and he twitched. While I was enjoying my time of domination, I was also weary and I wanted to see Eric. I let my fangs out and brushed them gently against the crook of his neck, but I did not pierce his skin. "I was considering drinking your blood, to help me heal, but I find I am too disgusted by you to do so. I will simply crush your heart instead."

"No, please. I promise‒"

"'I do not believe in the promises of demons,' as one of your faithful followers so accurately put it." I closed my fist around his heart before he could say anything else, and his lifeblood gushed through my fingers. He sagged as all his preternatural strength deserted him, and then he started to crumble and break apart. I pulled my hand from his body, and my arm was completely red and the pulpy remains of the _god's_ heart were still in my hand. I looked at them for a moment, curious about what a vampire heart might looked like, and then I tossed them away and wiped my hand on the grass. I went over to Eric, who had not moved since the _god_ had let him go, and he was very white, the _god_ having drunk a lot of his blood. His broken leg had not healed yet, and his eyes were shut, but he wasn't unconscious. It was just more effort to keep them open.

I shook him by his arm and called his name. He opened his eyes and looked at me, and he seemed sad.

"Oh, Godric," he whispered. He lifted a hand to touch my face, my raw and blackened skin, but stopped. "What happened to you?"

"Never mind for now. You need blood. Here." I proffered my wrist, but he turned away.

"No," he said. "You need as much blood as possible to heal. I will not drink yours."

I tried to give him my wrist again. "But you need to feed."

"Then someone else's. I will not take yours." I dropped my arm and searched around, and found an old man, barely alive but alive enough for Eric's purpose. I dragged him over to Eric, being too weak to carry him properly, and told Eric to feed. He did so, and while he was feeding I examined his broken femur. The bone had pierced through the skin, but all I had to do was get it back in and it would heal properly. The only thing was that I was going to have to cut Eric's leg open, because his skin and muscle had already healed around the bone. I told him what I was going to do, and told him to keep feeding to distract himself. I used the ceremonial knife to slice open his thigh, and then I pushed the bone back in. Eric grunted in pain, but other than that he was perfectly still and silent. Once the bone was in and I was done, the incision healed up almost instantly. The bone would take a bit longer, but in a few minutes it would be well enough for him to at least walk on. Eric finished draining the old man and lay back onto the grass. I wanted to join him, but I did not.

"Why are you still standing?" he asked me. "You must be more hurt and exhausted than me, and I can hardly sit up."

"Because," I said faintly, "if I sit or lie down I will not be able to get up again before dawn comes." But just standing there was too hard to do, so I tried to find something to occupy me while Eric recuperated. I decided to cut off the _god's_ head, because I realized I was going to need it later. When Eric saw what I was doing with the knife, he asked why.

"I need to frighten the people into never even considering looking for us again."

"Okay, but how can that frighten the people so much? I mean, besides the fact that it will look ghastly and barbaric. And why were they all watching as that vampire tried to kill you?"

I forgot that he knew nothing about this vampire and his relationship with the villagers. I dropped the knife and held up the head to scrutinize it. The _god_ looked quite ugly, his face warped with fear and spattered with blood. "We will discuss it later, but all you need to know now is that the people will be afraid of the two vampires who had the strength to kill a god."

Eric slowly sat up, as if testing his strength, and then, even more sluggishly, climbed to his feet. He swayed once when he first stood, but he stayed up, and he gave me a resolute look. "You _will_ explain it all to me, but I will not ask you anymore for now."

"Good." I started walking in the direction that most of the people had run in. "Now, let us go find the villagers."


	9. Chapter 9

**The Phlegethon is one of the five rivers in Hades. It is the river of fire.

**Chapter Nine:**

It did not take us long to find the villagers, nor to scare them into staying away from us. I held the blood-caked hair of their _god's_ decapitated head in my fist, and warned them that if they tried to follow us and seek retribution, the same would happen to them. They all stared at me with scared, sunken eyes and pale faces and trembling lips, watching as I tied a length of rope around the _god's_ hair and hung his head from a tree in the centre of their village. It swung in the mild breeze, and I warned all the villagers that no one was to touch the head, that it was to be a reminder of mine and Eric's strength and brutality. A woman gasped as the head spun on its rope to face her, and I grasped Eric's shoulder and led him away, leaving the villagers to bask in their fear. The night was still fairly young, and I wanted the time to put as much distance between us and the Romanian villagers as possible.

I could tell that Eric desperately wanted to ask me questions, especially about my monstrous scars, but he held his silence as we moved away from the village. It was a very slow-going process, what with me and Eric being injured and weakened, which was precisely why I had wanted to instil fear into the villagers ‒ to prevent them from coming after us while we were in this pathetic state.

It was not until a few hours later, when we had found a spot to rest for the coming day, that someone spoke ‒ I asked Eric if he would not mind gathering up some wood, so that we could have a fire tonight. I was not worried that anyone would see the light, because the spot we had chosen was deep in the forest, away from most human habitation, and had trees so thick that the moonlight could not penetrate through the branches. The forest consisted of mostly tall oaks, with some beeches and various smaller trees dispersed throughout, and they created such an intense darkness that, even to my eyes, the night looked dim. It all felt very black, very mysterious, and very comfortable to me in that moment.

While Eric was gone to get wood, I rounded together some small rocks and built an unsophisticated fire pit. Once that was done, I sat myself down against a tree and waited for Eric to come back. The forest was full of night sounds, from nocturnal birds and insects to the rustling of some larger mammal nearby, which I am almost certain was a deer.

Eric returned a minute later with an armful of wood, which he put down and then went about starting the fire. When the flames were burning brightly he came and sat next to me, on my left and perfect side, and crossed his legs in front of him. I sighed deeply as I thought about how I was going to respond to the questions that he would inevitably ask me ‒ the sun was not far off, but it was enough time for him to probe me for answers.

I laced my fingers behind my head and stared into the single spot of light in this habitat of darkness. The fire seemed almost profane, in this place where blackness reigned, but I did not want to put it out; I needed it, for reasons I cared not to admit.

Eric leaned his back against the tree and turned his head to rest his chin on his shoulder, staring at me. I could make out his well-defined features clearly in the flickering orange light, and all I could see in them was concern: concern for me, for what I had been through.

"Can I ask you about what happened back there?" he asked delicately.

I closed my eyes against the memories that flooded into me, tried to push them back so that they did not swallow me up. When I managed to get myself under control, I reopened my eyes. "I suppose you should know."

"You do not have to tell me if you do not want to."

"I will have to tell you sometime, so it might as well be now."

I related the whole story to him, from being kidnapped in Bulgaria to being carried to Romania, and being imprisoned inside a cage. I told him about the _god_, who was actually a vampire, and how he tricked the people into giving him blood as payment for his 'protection.' I told him about the silver net and chains, and the burns from the silver cage, and the whippings, and how the _god_ was going to slit my throat and drink my blood before he decapitated me, cut out my heart, and set my body on fire. But when it came time to tell him about the rapes, I could not. When I tried, my voice got caught in my throat and I could not speak. The weight of everything that had happened was beginning to overwhelm me, and the disgrace of being used by so many men, and particularly that deplorable vampire, was too much. I just wanted to run away from it all. I unlaced my fingers and let my hands fall into my lap, and turned my face away from Eric.

"Godric, what is it?" Eric put his hand on my back and tried to get me to look at him. He knew something was amiss.

I tried to shy away from his touch, but kept his hand in place. "It is nothing," I said in a hushed voice.

"It is not 'nothing'. What could be worse than what you have already told me?"

A tear fell from my eye. I had been crying a lot lately, either from pain or despair. "Eric, please."

His fingers dug into my flesh as he tried to turn me back to him. "Godric, look at me."

I unwillingly obliged him, and when he saw my blood-streaked face he wrapped me in his arms and held me close. "Tell me what is bothering you so," he whispered into my hair, acting for all the world like he was the parent and I was the child.

But I let him hold me until I had collected myself, and then I gingerly pushed him away from me. I wiped away the tears from the good side of my face with the palm of my hand before I continued with my narrative. "It is not actually worse than what I have already said. I do not know why this is harder to say."

"What is it?"

"On the first night that the humans brought me to Romania, the night before you came, there was a certain..._event_...to commence the vampire's macabre ritual. It was a part of my punishment, for being an evil demon. I told you that I killed most of the men and women who had tried to seize me in Bulgaria, but obviously a few survived, and the male survivors were rewarded upon their return by being allowed to partake in my punishment."

"Just the men?"

I thought back to the rotten-toothed woman stirring the cooking pot. "The women did not have what it took to punish me properly," I said acrimoniously.

Eric stiffened, and I could hear his teeth grating as he clenched his jaws tightly together. "What did they do?" he asked, enunciating every word distinctly.

"They took me to their gathering place, where you found me, and the men, fourteen of them, and the vampire all lined up and..."

"And?" That one word was laced with deadly venom.

I turned my face away from Eric once more. "They raped me. They tied me up and forced me onto all fours, like I was a bitch in heat, and they all raped me. The vampire cut open my back and drank my blood as he fucked me." I had become dead calm as I spoke to Eric, distancing myself from the act and instead only reiterating the facts and not the feelings. Eric, on the other hand, was shivering with suppressed rage.

"Those fucking dogs!" he bellowed. "I'm going to go back there and kill them all!"

"Eric, shush! Calm down!"

"Calm?" He looked at me with wild eyes. "How can you be calm? They raped and tortured and almost killed you. Look what they did to you!" He stabbed a finger into my right pectoral muscle, indicating to my burn and lash marks, and I cried out in pain and put a hand protectively over where he had jabbed me. My cry caused Eric's rage to falter as he realized what he had done.

"It is okay, Eric," I said, placating him. "I know you did not mean to hurt me." I took my hand away to show him I was all right, but he still felt guilty. "And I am calm because it is the only way I can deal with all this. If I let myself feel it too much..." My lips spread in a weak smile, and I said, "I am afraid I am not as strong as I pretend to be." The smile quickly waned. "I cannot think about it anymore, Eric. I need to remove myself from it, to pretend that it never happened to me. It is too much." I massaged my eyelids in an effort to wipe away the visions in my mind, but the skin over my right eye seared under the touch so I instantly retracted my hand.

Eric laid his hand upon my forearm in a comforting manner. "It would be too much for anyone to bear," he murmured soothingly. I nodded absently, and looked up into the tree tops, trying to see the position of the moon; but I did not actually need the moon to tell me that there was an hour until sunrise. I got up, after patting Eric's hand, and walked only a few feet before stopping. I called over to Eric.

"I think I am going to dig the bed now. I am exhausted."

Eric came over to help, and in minutes we had a sizeable hole. I wiped the dirt off my hands and crawled into the ground.

"I am going to bed," I said, looking up at Eric as he picked at the dirt under his fingernails. "There is still some time before the sun rises, so you do not need to come in yet. Just remember to cover us properly when you do." I lay down on my left side, the undamaged side, and felt deliriously happy that I got to spend a day without being surrounded by silver.

Eric stopped picking at his nails and stared at me with a strange shine in his eyes. He hopped down into the hole and shovelled the dirt in with his arms to cover us. When he was done, he lay down next to me, and I felt him tentatively put his arms around my waist. I twisted my head to look at him, and he held himself as if waiting for me to tell him to remove his hands.

"You do not have to comfort me. I do not need to be comforted."

"I know," he said in a hushed voice. "But I want to."

When I did not tell him to stop, he wrapped his body closely around me and settled down to sleep. He nuzzled his face into my hair, breathing in my familiar scent, and held me tightly. Even though I protested that I did not need it, the comfort Eric gave with these gestures did feel good, and my eyes began to feel heavy as I drifted closer to sleep. On the brink of unconsciousness, I mumbled a question to Eric:

"How is it that you came to save me from the Romanians, but I actually ended up saving you?"

"It is fate, I suppose," he replied, his lips tickling the nape of my neck.

"Fate? How is that fate?"

I could feel him smiling. "I do not know. It just sounded like a good answer."

I chuckled quietly, but whatever was said after that I know not, for I fell asleep.

* * *

There were two blue orbs hanging above me, and they glowed with malevolence in the solid darkness. I felt afraid, and tried to back away, but long fingers reached out to snatch at me.

"It is me," a soft voice spoke. Those talon-like hands were petting me, trying to calm me.

Eric. My tense muscles loosened as I remembered that I was no longer a prisoner of the Romanian vampire and his lackeys ‒ I was safe and with Eric.

Eric was leaning over me, waiting for me to claw out of the haze of fear. When he felt me relax, he stood up and offered me a hand out of the ground, which I took.

As I brushed the dirt off myself, I perceived that Eric was being very careful about where he looked at me. My burns must still be pretty serious, if Eric felt uncomfortable looking at them.

"Last night, while you were gathering wood, did you happen to notice if there was any water around here?" I asked of him as I shook dirt from my hair.

Eric pointed west. "I think I heard some water running in that direction, probably not too far."

About a kilometre out, we found a small brook gurgling over the rocky ground. The water was very clear and cold, and looked wonderful. I stripped off all my clothes, what little I still had, before I stepped into the water, and washed the dirt and blood of the past two nights off my skin. Eric splashed his face, but that was all. He kept his eyes on me, like a hawk, the entire time, like he was afraid I would disappear on him or something. But he repeatedly and, I believe, unintentionally avoided looking at the right half of me. I cupped some water in my hands and held it up to my face, and tried to discern my reflection in it. It was only a pale likeness, but what I could see was repulsive. I had thought my body looked bad, with blackened and crispy skin, but my face...my face... It was like someone had ripped off the skin on that side of my face, and then lit it on fire. My cheek was nothing but the thinnest layer of muscle that barely covered my bone structure; I could even see the whiteness of my cheekbone in some spots. My eyelashes and a good portion of my eyebrow had been singed off, and my eyelid was raw, but thankfully could still close it over my eye. I could clearly see the frontal bone peaking out from the charbroiled skin of my forehead.

As I let the water trickle from my hands, an uncontrollable anger welled in me, an anger I had evaded last night, and I threw my head back and howled, putting all my pain, anger, and fear into that one long note. Eric sat silently by and waited for me to finish, and when I had, he looked at me like I was a strange creature he had never seen before. But he wisely kept his mouth shut. I climbed out of the water and over to him.

We sat, side by side, next to that little brook, just listening to the rush of water over rock, for a short eternity. I made sure to sit on his right side so he would not be forced to look at my ruined half. I could feel the moon creeping higher in the sky, and after another while I thought that we had wasted enough time. We should be on the move.

"We should go," I said to Eric.

"Go where?"

"I do not know." I went to get up, but Eric held me in place by my arm. He looked at me, really looked at me this time, and seemed very grim.

"How are you?"

"I am fine." I glanced away under his direct stare, but made my eyes return to his. "The burns hurt like the Phlegethon of Hades, but they will eventually heal once I have more blood." I tried to sound carefree about it.

"Godric," Eric enunciated sombrely, "you know what I am really asking about."

"No," I said almost inaudibly. I could feel my anger rising again, and tried to dampen it. I was having a difficult time retaining my calm tonight. "I said all I wanted to say last night. We will not talk about it anymore."

"Godric‒"

"No more, Eric." I jerked my arm from his grip and scrambled to my feet. "No more. We are done talking about it. I told you I want to forget about it all, and that starts tonight." I walked away from him.

"But we should talk about it more," he pressed.

I whipped around and had my hand on his throat in an instant, my eyes flashing dangerously. "I said," I hissed vehemently, "that we are done talking about it. This is my decision to make, not yours. I thought you understood that last night." I let him go, and took a step back. Eric rubbed his throat where I had grabbed him, and showed me the most heart-wrenching expression I had ever seen on him.

"I only want to help," he whispered desolately. My anger cooled immediately at hearing the sadness in his voice.

"Oh, Eric," I moaned regretfully and tried to reach out to him, but my hand dropped away before touching him. "I am so sorry. I truly am. It's just...I-I cannot...I do not want talk about it anymore. I want to forget." I hung my head in shame at my weakness.

Eric bent down and lifted my chin to look at him. He had stopped massaging his throat, and a gentle smile curved his lips. "I understand," he said compassionately. "I will never mention it again, unless it is by your decision."

"Thank you." I returned his smile, and for a moment everything felt peaceful. It was sublime. "Now," I said, breaking the moment, "I think it is time for us to leave this place for good."

Eric straightened up and scouted the trees around us. "Any particular place in mind?"

"No," I responded, shaking my head as I followed the winding path of the brook. "Anywhere but here." And with that, we were once again on the move.

* * *

We never did really talk about Romania again. Eric let me bear my burden in silence, even though for a handful of nights he had to watch me heal the hideous scars left behind by my captors. He acceded to my wishes to leave things be without complaint, let me regain myself piece by piece, and for that, more than anything else, I was eternally grateful to him.

END OF PART ONE.

**End note: I did not originally plan to, but I have decided to divide the story into parts, simply because of the amount of time I want to cover. It was the only logical way I could think of doing things without dragging it out too long.


	10. Chapter 10

**First off, I would like to thank everyone who has stuck with my story so far. I hope you are enjoying it, and if you would like me to do something different, please feel free to comment. And I would also like to thank those who have taken the time to write reviews for this story. They are greatly appreciated :)

**In case anyone will wonder later on, the toilet is not how we think of it today. In the 18th century, the toilet was a room or a table for make-up, hairdressing, body care, etc. (think _toilette_). Most houses used chamber pots and outhouses to dispose of human waste. And a terraced house is a townhouse.

**Chapter Ten:**

London, England. A great city, in the early stages of a great revolution which was beginning to change life as I had always known it. New machines and technologies were being created which would affect the processes of agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, and other sectors of society; and capitalism, though it had existed for some time already, was beginning to spread its tendrils into the world as a major economic system. These are only the bare bones of the great changes that were taking place before my very eyes, and I felt that they would have a profound effect on the future of the human race. But even above all these grand changes, one thing was constantly at the forefront of my mind: I was close to home, the closest I had been since I had left it almost eighteen hundred years ago.

I stood outside in the chilly, cloudy night, with wet flakes of snow falling around me, wearing only a thin, white cotton shirt and breeches. The air was not cold enough for the snow to stay, and I stood, in bare feet, in the thin layer of slush that was forming on the stone deck of the second-story balcony. The few people on the street beneath me were slogging through the damp snow, rushing from one place to the next on some unknown mission. I felt very far away from them, not only because of my distance above them, but also because they did not see me or acknowledge my existence. I was an invisible spectator to the trivialities of their lives, and I felt both powerful and powerless: able to observe without repercussion but also unable to affect their lives in any way.

The river Thames flowed quietly out of my vision, but I could hear its waters rippling steadily in the dark. The Thames almost never froze during the winter season, except on a few rare and spectacular occasions. The last was only a few years ago, so I have been told, in 1776, and it created quite a stir amongst the Londoners who had witnessed it.

A weak light spread across the balcony as the doors that led from the house to the balcony swung open. Heavy, booted footfalls splashed through the slush, and a long-fingered, pale hand rested next to mine upon the stone balustrade.

"Hello, Eric," I said softly without looking up at the man next to me. I could tell it was Eric as soon as he entered any place, by his scent and his sounds, and his lack of heartbeat. All of it together was just inherently Eric.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked, cocking his head down towards me, his eyebrows gently furrowed.

Eric and I had now been together for nearly seven hundred years ‒ seven hundred years since I had found him that night in Sweden, bleeding and dying, and desperate to hold onto life; seven hundred years of being his Maker, his companion, and I had not regretted one moment of it. It had been difficult in the beginning, yes, and not at all what I had expected of a Maker-child relationship, but that was in the past. All that mattered to me was the present, and the Eric that I knew now was magnificent, a remarkable vampire. He had an air about him that was so strong, yet so calm and collected, but somehow never cold. He managed to walk that fine line that I had never mastered, between being mysterious and enticing rather than indifferent and frigid. He had a gift, to be able to keep everyone at a distance and yet still fascinate them, a gift I was envious of; and yet, despite his allure to others, I was the only one he kept close, the only one he wanted under his watchful eye, as if to protect me. As centuries passed us by, Eric's loyalty to me increased greatly and, as he was now, he was the kind of child that every Maker hoped to create. He was perfect, my beautiful Eric.

I exhaled slowly through my mouth, and felt dismayed when nothing happened. I could remember that as a child, I loved breathing into the chill winter air and seeing my breath mist in a great white cloud. But now I no longer needed to breathe, and even if I expended the effort to make myself breathe, my breath was colder than winter and could not steam. I closed my mouth and turned my face to the sky, and felt as snowflakes landed, un-melting, on my skin.

"Just watching the snow fall," I responded to Eric's question.

He glanced at my feet. "You have no shoes."

I looked down as well. "It appears you are right," I said, as I tried to catch snowflakes with my hands.

A carriage rumbled past on the street below, drawing both Eric's and mine's attention. I caught the sound of a heartbeat inside, and I could feel my hunger rising inside me. I tried to stifle it.

Eric stretched out his hand and watched as the heavy snow landed on his open palm. "I miss winter," he said.

"This _is_ winter."

He sighed and shook his head, still watching his hand collect snow. "This is not winter. I miss _proper_ winters, winters like they had at home. This would have been considered a fine spring night, back in Sweden."

I smiled at his joke about English winters. A true Viking, to this day: if something was not extreme, it was negligible and hardly deserved consideration. "You know that we can leave, if you like. Go find a place that has proper winters."

He closed his fist around the flakes that had gathered in his palm. "No, not yet. We can spend some more time here; we have not been here long. I do like the house, and the city."

As time had passed, Eric and I began to stay in more lavish lodgings. Prior to moving to our current house in England, we had spent over a century living in France. At first, our houses had been extravagant houses in the countryside, quite isolated from society, but recently Eric had wanted to be closer to people, and I wanted a change of scenery, which was why we were presently living in the city of London.

Our house was an elegant terraced house, an end unit of two stories, with a red brick face and a narrow, white marble arch over the oak double doors; and etched into the marble were delicate engravings of vines that sinuously caressed the curve of the arch. The inside of the house was quite extensive, with more rooms than Eric and I had use for. There was the large hall, which the double doors open into, and in the hall was the grand staircase and a fireplace. There was also the dining room and the kitchen, both of which were never used; a large sitting room; and a smaller drawing room. On the second level were the bedrooms: one master suite, three slightly smaller rooms for the master's children or guests, and six plain quarters for the servants, which remained empty for now ‒ servants can be a risk for vampires, because they tend to see and hear more than they should. There was also the toilet, and the balcony, where Eric and I stood, which was attached to the master suite and overlooked the street. Neither Eric nor I occupied the master suite. I found it too large for my comfort. And, of course, there were the service hallways and stairs, much more cramped and narrower than their master's counterparts.

The house had cost us a pretty penny. Money, for a vampire, is an interesting concept: we do not actually need it, since we do not have to purchase the daily necessities that humans must, but it is a convenient thing to have, especially in cases where purchasing something leads to fewer questions asked than simply taking that something. The money Eric and I had, we had gotten from our victims after we killed them, either by taking the money that they had on their persons, or by assuming the rights to their properties, bank accounts, everything, through a false inheritance after their death. This process sounds complicated, but if you glamour the necessary people into believing that you actually are entitled to the money, it is very easy, though I would recommend it only if the person has no other family left who would fight your inheritance. Of course, there are other ways for a vampire to get money, but Eric and I both found this way the most agreeable to get what we wanted.

I jumped as I felt something tugging at my hair. I had been so absorbed in myself that I had not noticed Eric's arm reaching behind me ‒ he was pulling at the ribbon that was in my hair. Since it was the fashion, I had grown my hair long, so that it reached past my shoulders, and kept it off my face with a black silk ribbon. As my hair had gotten longer, it also got curly, so it often looked like a tangled nest unless it was tied back. Eric's hair was more manageable than mine, being a bit shorter and much straighter, but he also tied it back in order to look current.

Eric untied the ribbon and combed out my hair with his fingers, spreading it over my shoulders and brushing the snow from it.

"I like it better when it is down," he said lightly as he ordered my curls.

"Hm."

He stopped his grooming and peered at me. "What?"

"Nothing." I pursed my lips and continued watching the snow fall. It was slowing down, and soon it would stop entirely. I did miss proper winters too, I had to admit. There was almost nothing I loved so much as seeing the world covered in a thick layer of fresh, crisp snow.

"Are you hungry?" I asked Eric abruptly.

"Not really."

"Oh. Well, I am, so I think I might go find someone to eat."

"You are going to go out in this?" He plucked at the loose sleeve of my shirt, reminding me that I was dressed inappropriately.

"Yes, why not? It is not like anyone will see me in this; or, not anyone who will live to remember. Besides," I added with a sly grin, "I do not want to get blood all over my fancy clothes."

Eric chuckled. "You almost never spill blood, Godric." He stared out into the distance for a few seconds. "I think I will come with you."

"You do not have to, if you are not hungry."

He turned around and leaned his back against the balustrade, so that he faced the doors to the master suite. "It is all right, I will come. I do not have anything else planned for tonight, anyways."

I tapped my middle and forefinger thoughtfully against my lips. "What about that girl you have been seeing? What is her name? I thought you enjoyed her company."

"Who, Matilda?" A deprecatory smile twitched his lips for a short instant, as he folded his arms loosely over his chest. "I grow weary of her. She has no variety in bed ‒ every time is the same as the time before." Eric often had this sort of relationship with women, where he would use them for sex but not blood, though he did know how to feed from someone without killing them.

"I think she is fond of you," I said.

"So?" He sighed exasperatedly. "It does not matter anyways. I am done with her."

"You should find a new girl, then."

Eric frowned at me, but gave no other response. "How come I never see you with anyone?" he asked after a long pause.

I copied Eric and leaned my back against the balustrade and crossed my arms over my chest. "I have very little interest in...that."

Eric let out a surprised snort. "How can you have no interest in sex?" Then another question appeared to strike him. "Do you really have no interest in anyone besides children?"

"Eric‒"

"I have always known about it, though I think you tried to hide it from me. Why are you resisting your urges now? You never did before; you just tried to be secretive about it."

My eyelid twitched, and I turned to Eric slowly and said in a very controlled voice, "Are you really encouraging me to engage in relations with children?"

Eric straightened up with a startled jolt. "No, no! I am just asking, why?"

My fingers were digging into the stone of the balustrade, and I had to forcibly relax myself before I tore out a chunk from the railing. "Because it is heinous," I whispered, sounding strained.

"But you are just a child yourself."

My eyes flashed angrily as I glared up at Eric. "If you had a child, a little boy or girl, would you really think that?"

Eric remained silent.

"I thought not. And I am only a child in appearance, as you should well know."

"But the Greeks used to have relationships with children."

I groaned in frustration. "Even they stayed away from prepubescent children, Eric. I cannot believe you are encouraging me to do this."

"I am not!" he insisted vigorously. "I only wonder, why the change of heart? What made you want to stop?"

"I did not _want_ to stop; I had to _make_ myself!" I snapped my lips shut and waited for my calm to return. "Your perception of things change as you age," I said in a more composed voice. "You know this; how you see me now is very different from how you saw me in the past. How I see children now is...it is different. They seem so fragile to me, so innocent. I still want them, the gods help me, but at the same time, I no longer want to hurt them. Because that is what I did." I jabbed a finger into his chest to enforce my point. "I hurt them. I took their innocence, and that is not something they can get back. Do you understand? I stopped not because I wanted to, but because I had to; I would not be able to live with myself if I had continued to harm children." When Eric made no attempt to say anything, I moved off the balustrade and headed for the open doors, into the house.

"I am going to feed now," I said over my shoulder. "You can come if you want, or not, it does not matter."

Eric fell in beside me, a towering, silent shadow, and said practically nothing the entire time we were hunting.

* * *

As we walked back to our house, satiated and much more jovial than when we had left, I noticed a dark form standing at our front steps. I pulled Eric to a stop and pointed at the figure.

"There is a young girl at our door," he remarked idly, and started walking again.

I stopped him once more. "That is no young girl, Eric. I think that is a vampire."

"A vampire!" he exclaimed. "What would a vampire be doing at our door?"

I kept my eyes suspiciously on the small form. "That is what I would like to know."


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven:**

The vampire surveyed us as we approached our house. She did not appear frightened, or cautious, but rather she seemed almost satisfied, like she had been expecting us. That alone put me on alert.

She had been standing on the lower steps as she waited for Eric and me to arrive, but she moved up to the doors as we closer to the house, brushing invisible dirt from her full skirts. She smiled at us, but did not move away from the doors, letting us know that if we wanted to get inside, we would have to go through her.

"My, my," she said, and her voice tinkled like glass chimes. It was beautiful, disconcertingly so. "You two are quite the handsome fellows, aren't you? Much more so than the others." Her eyebrows twitched as she took in my state of relative undress. "That is quite the delicious outfit," she said to me, her words spiked with sarcasm mixed with seduction.

Eric and I glanced at each other quickly, but kept silent. The others? She smiled again, and dropped a very small curtsy. "I am Gabrielle."

After a long moment, I inclined my head towards her and held my hand over my heart. "I am Godric, and he is Eric."

Her eyes flicked up the immense shape of Eric, then to me. "Pleased to meet you."

"What are you doing here?" I candidly asked. I had no desire to start in with the pleasantries.

Her smile widened, and it felt like more of a smirk to me. A condescending smirk. "May I come inside?" she inquired, ignoring my question, and gestured towards the oak doors at her back.

"That would depend on why you are here," I answered crisply, irritated with her presumptuous attitude.

"Oh, do not worry," she said, waving her hand as if to ward off the worry. "I am here on business matters. I only wish to talk."

Surprised, I repeated, "Business?" I had no idea of what she was referring to.

"Yes." She stomped her feet impatiently. "Can we please go inside, so we can discuss this in private?" She glanced up to the windows of the next house, and though they were dark, it appeared she did not want to take any chance of someone seeing or overhearing us.

I was wary of her, of letting her into my house, but she posed little threat to Eric and me together. I went around her and opened a door, and held it for her and Eric to pass through.

When I closed the door behind me, I bolted it shut, wanting to make sure no one would enter the house while Gabrielle, Eric, and I were talking. As I clanged the iron bolt into place, Eric cautiously watched Gabrielle as she spun about, examining the hall.

"This is nice, isn't it?" She ran her fingers over the oak-panelled walls, her shoes clacking on the gold-veined black marble flooring as she walked to the massive, white marble fireplace at the far end of the hall, and then back again. "The stairs are lovely," she burbled as she came to the beautiful structure of rich, red-brown oak set in the centre of the hall.

"You said you wanted to talk," I reminded her, my voice reverberating in the lofty hall.

She spun towards me, her eyes glittering curiously. "Yes," she affirmed, and walked to me and Eric. "Is there somewhere we can sit?"

I nodded, and led her out of the hall into another room. This was the drawing room, a small room filled with scattered maple wood chairs, small couches, a short, round oak table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a narrow bookshelf, and a fortepiano in a corner. The floor was the same marble as the hall, but was strewn with colourfully woven carpets. The walls were white plaster with floral designs, and the two large, benched windows that faced the street were covered with heavy velvet drapes of deep blue with gold tassels; and between the windows was an elegant stone chess table with two sturdy, but comfortable, cushioned chairs.

Gabrielle took a seat in one of the maple wood chairs, and Eric and I sat opposite her on a couch. I had not paid attention before, outside on the steps, but she really was very pretty. Her dark auburn hair was in a mass of curls piled atop her head, with tiny, twinkling jewels pinned in it. Her skin was very pale, nearly translucent, and seemed to glow in the dim lighting of the drawing room, and her blue-green eyes were very quick and took in every minute detail of her surroundings. Her body looked soft and voluptuous. She wore a full-skirted, low-necked, pale blue gown trimmed with white lace, and with ivory beads and silver stitching on the bodice and skirts. A simple gold necklace with a small, decorative cross hung from her neck. She looked to be no older than eighteen.

"What is it you wished to discuss?" I asked of Gabrielle after she had taken her seat.

Gabrielle settled her skirts around her, and then folded her delicate hands in her lap. When she looked up at me, she was no longer smiling. Her eyes were like the stormy sea, and bore right into me.

"You are in my territory," she announced plainly, no longer having to hide her reasons for coming for fear of being overheard by others.

"What?"

"You are in my territory," she repeated.

Eric leaned over and whispered into my ear, "What is she talking about?"

I shrugged, and he slanted away from me, back to his original position. "I am sorry," I said to Gabrielle, "but I do not understand what you are saying."

She sighed. "Are you being deliberately stupid? It is not that hard to figure out: you...are...in...my...territory."

"Vampires do not have territories."

"Yes, they do. Some are starting to, at least. They are mostly in Asia, however, from what I understand, with only a few here in Western Europe. I have claimed London for myself."

I shifted stiffly on the couch. Eric stretched his arm across the back of the couch and touched his fingers to the back of my head in a mollifying gesture. "What does that have to do with us?" I wanted to know.

Gabrielle noted Eric's touch, and her lips curled contemplatively. "In order to maintain my authority in London, I keep track of any and all vampires who enter here, however briefly. You have been here for nearly a month, but I have not had the chance to meet with you. I have been rather busy, you see." She absently patted the back of her hair. "If any vampire stays within London for any length of time, they must pay me a price and give me their guarantee that they will not create trouble within my territory."

"And if we do not agree to do so?"

"You will be punished according to the circumstances. Typically it is eviction, other times torture, and sometimes...sometimes it's even execution." She said it as easily as if she were talking about the weather.

A low rumble started in Eric's chest, building to a distinctly aggressive sound. I turned on him and put my hand on his chest. "Eric, stop," I commanded. "She has made no threat to me, only a statement." The rumble died, and Eric relaxed; but his eyes shot icy daggers towards Gabrielle, who only seemed amused by all this.

"Does he talk at all, or is he a mute?"

Eric did not open his mouth, so I had to answer. "He does talk. Most of the time quite a lot, just apparently not now."

Gabrielle laughed a tinkling laugh, and it sent shivers up my spine. I think Eric could feel me react, because he gave me a penetrating look.

"Oh, poor me," Gabrielle moaned, feigning sorrow. "But it is no matter: you are the one I must talk to anyways."

A clock rang in one of the other rooms of the house. It sounded out three tolls: three in the morning. I waited for it to finish before I spoke to Gabrielle. "Why? Because I am older than you?" I could feel Gabrielle's power and knew that she was younger than me, but older than Eric.

She nodded. "I do not get many vampires close to my age, let alone older, in my territory."

"But I am certain you have some sort of safeguard in case I decide to be disobedient, am I correct?" I gave her a knowing smile, which she returned.

"I do. Though you are older, you are only one. Two at the most," she conceded with an inclination to Eric. "I have a nest of eleven, all of them older than your friend here, if not you, and with them I could deal with you quite easily."

"He is my child," I said automatically.

"I thought so," she said, bobbing her head up and down absentmindedly. She pinched her bottom lip between her fingers as she mused over something.

"What is the price?" I asked her when she had been silent for some time.

"Hmm?" Her eyes darkened. "Oh, the price. Yes. I have to think about it." She sounded troubled about something.

"You do not have a set price for this sort of thing?"

She shook her head. "No, I determine the price based on the vampire. I think it only fair, rather than setting a single price that is too much for a young vampire, but not enough for an old vampire."

"So it is based upon power?" They were the first words Eric had spoken to Gabrielle since she had arrived.

A slow grin grew on her face, showing off perfect, pearly white teeth. I admired them: it was not often one saw such flawless teeth, especially among older vampires. "He speaks!" she enthused sardonically, even going so far as to clap her hands together. Eric gave her a dark glower and closed his mouth again. She eyed him speculatively before answering his question.

"In part it is based upon power. But it is also based upon how much I like the other vampire."

That perplexed me. "Do you mean to say that if you like the vampire, the price is easier to pay than if you dislike them?"

"Usually, unless there are certain other factors affecting my decision," she answered, seeming troubled again.

"Well, that is...interesting."

She shrugged elegantly. "I do not want everyone to hate me; I just need them to know who is the authority here."

In a way, I could understand her. She wanted power, and was willing to do what she must for it, yet she also appreciated the fact that, sometimes, it is easier to charm others into giving you power and authority rather than taking it by force.

Gabrielle suddenly got up from her chair. "Well boys, that is all I have to say for tonight."

I stood up with her, and Eric followed more slowly after. "But you have not yet named your price," I said.

She gave me a shrewd perusal. "I need to think about certain things. I will return tomorrow night to lay down my terms." She headed for the open door to the hall, but stopped in the doorway and turned back to us. "Oh, and do not think of trying to leave before I return tomorrow. I demand recompense for the time you have already spent here in London, and I will have it. I cannot have you marring my reputation by fleeing my territory before I obtain your payment. I will know where you go if you try to run, and I will hunt you down if need be, which can only make things worse for you." Her tone had become so frigid, it would have made me shiver, and not from pleasure this time, had I been a lesser being. She stood in the doorway, staring sharply at me and Eric to make sure we understood her, and then started to walk away again.

"Gabrielle," I called out, stalling her, "I have just one more question: why do you do it?"

"What, claim a territory?"

I nodded.

She wrinkled her nose, before she replied, "Because I am a forward thinker. I fear that, unless vampires are controlled by a force greater than our individual selves, we will eventually harm the humans irreparably, which will speak disaster for us vampires who must survive off them. I am trying to insure that this does not happen in London." She paused, then went on, almost dreamily, "Someday, I do believe that the entire world will be split into official vampire territories in order to control the activities of all vampires, and I will have secured for myself a large piece of territory. I will be set for eternity."

"You cannot know that," I stated.

"No, but better safe than sorry. I think I can show myself out," she said, and tossed us one last parting smile before exiting the drawing room.

After I heard her lift the bolt on the main doors, and then open and close the doors, I dropped back onto the couch. Eric sat down next to me again.

"She is very avaricious," Eric declared once we had satisfied ourselves that she was truly gone. "And her personality is all over the place, from flirtatious to authoritative to biting cold and back again."

"I think she is quite insightful," I said.

"Really?" He sounded dumbstruck.

I pulled up my legs and curled them beneath me as I turned towards Eric. "Think about it: what she said makes sense. Our population is growing quickly, and if we are not careful then we could either alert the humans to our existence and frighten them into organizing massive hunts to execute us, or we could eventually extinguish our food supply if there are no measures to prevent moronic vampires from gorging themselves on blood or to stop them from turning too many humans into vampires. By claiming a territory, and having the power to enforce regulatory measures, she ensures herself a steady food supply, and forces other vampires who enter here to adjust their behaviours and blood consumption accordingly, so as to protect that food supply; or, if they refuse to, she either expels them or kills them."

"So why does she force vampires to pay a price, then, if her goal is really regulation? Why not just silently observe visiting vampires to make sure they are not causing any disruptions, instead of taking the time to speak with each individually and asking for remuneration?"

"The price is a means of asserting her authority, or of swiftly weaning out those who will disobey her rules. By coming here," I said as I brandished my hand in the air to signify our house, "and demanding payment, she has shown us that she has the power to know where we are and to make demands of us. And if we refuse to pay, it would likely mean that we would also refuse to follow her rules and intended to disrupt the balance she has created, thereby giving her the right to dispatch us in any way she sees fit."

Eric shook his head and drew a knee to his chest. "It all seems more convoluted than it is worth. I mean, why would anyone wish to spend their entire immortal existence in one place? That seems extremely boring to me."

"I agree with you, but others think differently." I rested an elbow on the couch back and cradled my jaw between my thumb and forefinger. "For some, power is everything," I said, pensive.

"What do you think she will ask from us?"

I frowned thoughtfully, wondering on the exact same thing. "I have absolutely no idea." The way that she appeared troubled whenever I mentioned price had me worried.

Eric grunted, acknowledging that he, too, was clueless as to what she wanted from us. "Why do you think she did not come to us when we first arrived here?" he asked after a pause. "Do you really think she was just too busy to meet with two new vampires who had intruded into her territory?"

"I do not know," I answered. "It could be as she said, that she really was busy. But I doubt that she did not at least have someone watching us at all times. Perhaps she did not come sooner because she saw that we have no desire to create anarchy within London. We keep our blood-drinking to a minimum, and always take astute care with any dead bodies we might end up with. And we have not tried to turn any humans. We are as careful with and around humans as she could want us to be."

The clock ticked steadily in the other room. Eric and I both listened to it mutely. "Do you want to play a game of chess?" I asked him when it had been too quiet for too long.

After whiling away a couple of hours playing multiple rounds of chess, the majority of which I won, we remained seated at the chess table and Eric twitched aside the velvet drape closest to him to look out the window. The sky was taking on a greenish tinge, announcing the coming arrival of the morning sun.

"You know, I think she likes you," Eric said out-of-the-blue, still staring out the window.

"What are you talking about?"

Eric dropped the drape back into place and swivelled to look at me, skepticism written on his face. "You mean you did not notice?"

"Notice what?" I riposted, puzzled by what Eric was trying to get at.

"Gabrielle likes you. Or, at least she is intrigued by you. She kept her big, doe eyes on you the whole time." As he said this, he fluttered his eyelashes at me in a mocking way.

I laughed at him. "That is only because you would not talk to her, and because I am older than her."

"I think it was more than that," he muttered, and suddenly he sounded bitter. But why would he be bitter? Then I understood.

"Do you like her? I did not think you did. You can have her, if she will have you," I told him. "She is not really my type."

Eric gave me a hard glare. "Godric, she is very much your type. I could feel how she affected you, even if you try to ignore it."

Instead of saying something in response, I got up from the chess table and walked away, out of the drawing room. I was not mad at Eric, and he knew it, I just could not think of what to say. He was partially correct, even if I had a hard time admitting it to myself. Gabrielle did have an effect on me, though not as much as I think Eric would like to believe. She merely interested me. I liked her voice.

I climbed up the stairs to the second level of the house, to my bedroom. It was a large room, though not the largest, and I kept everything in it to a bare minimum. There were no decorations in it: no pictures, no paintings, no flowers, carpets, figurines, anything, except for a full-length mirror placed against one wall. The walls were stuccoed white plaster. There was a wide, four-poster oak bed, stripped of its curtains‒I did not like anything obstructing my vision‒, and with a cotton-stuffed mattress. There was a small, simple, wooden bedside table that held a candle holder, with a lit candle, and a book ‒_Paradise Lost_‒; and there were the velvet drapes over the one floor-to-ceiling window, in a deep red, pulled tight against the sun's rays.

Once I had closed the bedroom door after me, I began taking off my clothes. I undid the laces at the neck of my cotton shirt and slipped it off, dropping it to the ground. I began to undo my breeches while walking towards the bed, and I inadvertently caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and had to stop and stare.

What I saw reflected in the silver surface was a small, pale, little boy, wearing the breeches of an English gentleman, but with the jarring tattoos of a wild man on his chest. I picked up my shirt off the floor and held it over my torso, so the reflection showed only my head and my civilized English clothing. I lowered the shirt to cover my legs, and all I saw staring back at me was a barbarian, with the markings of a fighter, a killer. But the boy in the mirror looked delicate and weak, like a porcelain doll that would crack if it was dropped, that those markings looked like a joke. How could someone so fragile, so _gentlemanly_, possibly have the strength and will to fight and kill?

I was two opposing forces, bound together in one body.

I tossed the shirt over the mirror, hiding my reflection, and stripped off my breeches. Enough pointless thinking, I thought to myself.

There was a knock on my bedroom door, and I instinctively went to answer it, though I was only wearing my drawers. It could only be one person, anyways.

"Let me guess why you are here."

Eric stepped past me into the room without a word. I sighed and closed the door, and flicked the catch into place.

"You have your own room, you do realize," I said to his retreating back as he pulled off his clothes and left it in a trail on the floor that led to my bed. He crawled naked into the bed and slipped under the covers. I stared at him for a long minute before joining him, still wearing my drawers.

As I lay down, Eric curled his long body around me and pulled me close to him. He did this quite often, actually. He liked to sleep with me; he seemed to find contentment in it. Eric may not look it, with his icy, piercing eyes and intimidating stature, but he really was a very affectionate person ‒ with certain people.

"Are you worried about tomorrow night?" I asked him, while watching the candle's flame flicker on the bedside table.

"No," he mumbled, his voice smothered by my hair. His body quaked with a short laugh as he corrected himself. "Yes."

"Do not worry." I patted the hand at my waist encouragingly. "We will deal with it when the time comes. We can handle it. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Good. Now go to sleep." I shifted forward and blew out the candle, then nestled my head deeper into my pillow.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve:**

"So, what is your decision?" Gabrielle watched me closely as she waited for an answer.

"You want me to what?" I exclaimed when I could get my mouth to work properly.

"I want you to kill a certain vampire."

We were sitting in the drawing room again, in the same seats as last night. When Eric heard the price Gabrielle demanded of me, he bent forward and dropped his face into his hands. He lifted his head out of his hands enough to squint at me sideways over his fingers, then rolled his eyes up to scowl at Gabrielle. She sat, wearing a silver dress embroidered with black thread and black onyx beads, looking very self-assured.

"Why can't you do it yourself?" I questioned.

She crossed one ankle over the other and regarded me and Eric coolly. "Technically, I do not need to explain myself to you. This is the price I demand from you, and either you pay it or I will punish you." It was all said with great power and conviction.

Eric jolted up straight, with his lips pressed together tightly, as if he was trying to keep himself from speaking terrible things. He likely was.

"I am aware of the fact that you are not required to tell me anything," I said to Gabrielle, while keeping a discreet eye on Eric. "But I am asking you to please tell me the reason why you want me to do this."

"Because I cannot." She said it very lightly, like her inability to kill the vampire was of no consequence to her. But under her composed exterior I could sense a flood of emotions. She had extreme dislike for this vampire. "He is older than me, nearly as old as you, Godric. He came to England not long ago, and was amazed by the power I had over the vampires in the territory I had carved for myself; and he decided that he would mould a territory for himself, in order to have great power as well."

Eric slumped back against the couch and looked at Gabrielle through hooded eyes. "I do not see why we need to kill him. So what if he wants his own territory? What does that have to do with you, or us?"

"He wants London for himself."

I cast a puzzled look at Eric, and he at me. "Why would he risk himself on a territory that has already been claimed?" I asked Gabrielle. "Why not form a new one?"

"He says that he likes the energy of this city," she replied, arching a perfect eyebrow, "but I believe that he just wants to prove to himself that he is the stronger vampire, between him and I. He is not in London now, but he will be shortly. Every few months he comes back to investigate matters, and I fear that he plans on making a move very soon, to overthrow me and take London."

I chewed silently on my fingernails as I thought about what Gabrielle had said. "But what about your nest?" I asked her. "You told me that you have eleven vampires all close to your age. Surely with them you could eradicate this vampire, if they can 'deal with me quite easily,' as you said last night."

"That will not work, in this case," she responded, slowly shaking her head back and forth. "He has a nest too, of equal size and strength. If I engage my vampires in a war against his while he is alive, there is a good chance that none of mine would survive. I cannot risk that."

"So what am I supposed to do? I cannot defeat twelve vampires, even if they are younger."

She pressed her hands flat together, as if she were praying, and touched the fingers to her lips. "You only need to kill the one vampire. I will deal with his nest once he is gone." Her voice still had that beautiful tinkling quality to it that I had found so appealing last night, but the tinkling was much more sombre tonight.

"You are willing to engage yourself in this battle? You will risk yourself and your vampires?" There was more sharpness in the delivery of those questions than I had intended there to be.

A hint of chagrin flickered across her countenance, but was quickly subdued. "I realize what I am asking of you," she said in a grim tone. "I have never asked a vampire for such a high price before. I do not think it fair to ask this of you unless I show you that I am also willing to take a risk to defend my territory. Besides, he is the only one I cannot kill. Once he is gone, I and my nest can certainly handle the rest of his vampires."

"What is his name?" Eric asked Gabrielle.

"What?"

"His name. You have been calling him 'he' all this time. You must know his name."

"Damien."

I pulled a strand of hair over my shoulder and played unconsciously with it. "You said he returns every few months. Do you know when he is to return next?"

She affirmed that she did. "He tends to keep to a schedule, though I do not know the significance of the date when he returns."

"When is it?" inquired Eric.

"On the seventh day of every third month. January, April, July, October."

Today was the second of January. We had five days.

"That does not give us a lot of time," Eric said to me.

"No, it does not," I agreed. "Why did you not demand this of us yesterday? I am sure you had already considered it by then. For that matter, why did you not come to us sooner and demand payment? You have known that we have been here for weeks now, yet you never came to ask us to do this."

"Yes, I had considered it," she admitted, looking down and away from us. "And I told you that I did not come earlier because I was busy with other, _personal_, matters. Do you actually want to know why I did not come straight out and tell you last night that this was your price?"

Eric and I both indicated that we did. I wanted to know why she had been so troubled.

"Because I was debating whether I should ask it of you," she asserted. "I am asking you to risk your life to rid me of an enemy that has very little to do with you. I needed to think about whether I _could_ ask you to do it. But, unfortunately, I need a solution to my problem, and you happen to be here."

She actually did seem ashamed of the fact that she was asking Eric and me to risk our lives for her. If circumstances had been different, I really do believe that she would not have asked this of us ‒ she was too proud to do so, to admit that she could not handle something on her own. I almost felt sorry for her, for her pitiful situation, for her struggle to maintain power. Almost.

"And if you are worried about time," she continued, "time does not matter. Whether you have five days or five hundred, I can only think of one way that you will be able to eliminate Damien."

"And how is that?" I demanded. "How are we, only two vampires, supposed to kill this vampire that you cannot get to with the twelve of you?"

"I have a plan, a plan that allows you to kill Damien without then being immediately attacked by his nest. It can only work because he does not know you are working for me. He knows who my vampires are, just like how I know who his are, and he will have never seen you with me before. He will be more likely to let you close to him. But mind you," she said, holding up her index finger for emphasis, "my plan still has a slim chance that you will get out unscathed. You understand?"

Eric and I made no comment.

"So do not go into this foolishly. Though it may not seem like it now, I really do not want you to die fighting my battle. What you need to do is go to him and lure him away from his nest, get him on his own. Now, here is the unpleasant part." She directed this to Eric only. "Damien is a very suspicious, cautious vampire. If he is approached by two of you as you attempt to separate him from his nest, he will not go. Godric has to go alone. He is the only one strong enough to kill Damien."

"What!" Eric shouted, jumping to his feet.

"Eric, calm down." I got up and put my hand on the rigid muscles of his arm. "Come sit down," I coaxed, directing him back onto the couch. He was so tense that when he moved, it was like his joints were rusted gears. Once he was re-seated, I turned my attention back to Gabrielle. "So that is why you were speaking only in singular tense. And what exactly am I supposed to do, to lure him out?"

"Tell him that you know of his desire to take London from me, and that you would like to speak with him, alone, about lending your support to his cause. Explain that you are interested in moving more permanently to London, and that you feel that I am not strong enough to hold London anymore and it is creating havoc amongst the vampires here, but that you have no desire to rule either; that you just want to live in peace. Tempt him to believe you, to follow you."

"And then what?"

She deliberately dragged her finger across her throat. "Once he is far enough away from his nest that you have time to escape, you kill him, and return to my house immediately‒I will leave you the address‒, where I and my nest will be waiting for your return. Once you are back, that will be the signal for us to go out and hunt down Damien's vampires. Whether you decide to join that fight is your choice, but I want Eric with me in the battle. That is his payment to me."

I leaned back on the couch and massaged my temples. "And how would you punish us if we refuse to do as you ask?"

She looked like she wished I had not asked that question. "I would have to kill you." She held up her hand to stop any protest. "I am sorry, that is just the way it is. I do what I must to protect my authority, and no leader likes resistors or rebels in their territory, do they? The higher the price I demand, the higher the punishment. I know I am asking a lot of you, but I _need_ you to help me in this, and the only way I can insure that you will actually go through with this is by giving you only two options: kill Damien, or you will be killed yourselves."

"You are so different from last night," I randomly commented. "Much less sarcastic and mischievous." It was true: the sometimes coquettish girl I had met yesterday was gone, replaced by this commanding, but somewhat sympathetic, woman.

"Yes, well." She shrugged her shoulders. "Last night was about introductions. There was more leeway for me to behave as I wanted. Tonight is about demanding your submission, and I have found that being sarcastic is less likely to encourage someone to agree to my demands than being serious."

Eric ignored this tangent of discussion. "How do you know that we will not simply take off and seek protection with Damien from you and your nest," he interrogated Gabrielle, "so as to escape having to pay you this price?"

"Because I am the lesser of two evils." She twisted a large emerald ring around her middle finger. "I think you might already realize that, even though you do not know Damien. If you were to ask Damien for his protection, he would also expect you to pay him a price, for protecting you from me; and chances are that his price would be identical to mine: he would want you to kill me. Furthermore, I doubt that he would be willing to let you go once you have killed me: he will want to keep you in order to secure his power base further. I am willing to leave you be once you have killed Damien."

Though I did not know if what she said was true ‒ that Damien would in fact imprison us to increase his power ‒ I could, to a degree, appreciate the situation she was in; and I could also see that we had little choice but to help her. I said as much to her.

"That is correct. Either you kill Damien, or I must kill you."

"Okay."

Both Gabrielle and Eric shot out of their seats, and they started speaking at the same time.

"Do you mean that you will?"

"Godric, we must talk about this!"

I raised my hands for silence, then addressed Gabrielle first. "Like you said, we do not have much of a choice. We will help you, but only under the promise that you will leave us alone afterwards."

"I said I would," she iterated, and bowed her head in a dignified manner. "I would have expected you to ask no less." A bright grin spread across her face. "And thank you so much, for agreeing to this."

"Yes, that's right, rejoice at our deaths," Eric snarled. I shot him a silencing glare.

"I think you should leave now, Gabrielle. Eric and I need to have a discussion."

"Yes, yes. Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?"

There were some sheets of paper and a quill and ink well on the fortepiano, which I pointed out, and she went over to scribble something down, then handed me a piece of paper. "This is my address. I want you to come tomorrow night so we can plan more fully what will happen, and this is where you will go once you have dispatched Damien. That is all for now. Good night, boys." She gave us a small wink, regaining some of her playful air now that she had gotten what she had come for, and then quickly left.

Once she had gone, Eric stalked towards me. "You are willing to die for that girl?" he furiously demanded.

"No, I am fighting for our survival."

"You are letting her force you into a battle that you might lose."

I stood and reached up to forcefully grasp the sides of Eric's face. "We are not going to die," I insisted. "You must listen to me now." I gazed intently into his eyes, and watched as his anger dimmed. "We will get through this, okay? Remember Romania?"

Eric's body stiffened with astonishment, but he nodded. I never mentioned Romania. I tried to act like it had never happened.

"Those odds were against us, against me, much more so than this, but we both survived."

"Barely."

I dug my fingers into the back of his head and pulled his face down closer to mine. "We both survived," I persisted. "That is all that matters. All I have to do is trick Damien and kill him. I am older than him, and therefore stronger. I will kill him, and then we will be free of Gabrielle."

"I do not want you to do this."

I let him go and sat back down on the couch. "You are more worried for me than for yourself."

"I always am."

I patted the spot next to me. "You should not be," I told him as he joined me. "You should think of yourself first, above all others."

"Like Gabrielle," he deadpanned.

I sighed heavily and rested my chin in the palm of my hand, and studied Eric's dark expression. "Yes," I eventually answered, and his mood turned even darker. "She is using what she has to protect herself, and her family. Given the choice, I would sacrifice others before you or me."

"So you are still intrigued by her, even with what she is doing to us?"

"Are you?" I shook myself. "No, stop. Intrigue has nothing to do with this. I can understand her, is all. Now I am not condoning what she is doing to us," I added, overriding the complaints Eric was making. "I, too, am angered by what she has ordered us to do, but moaning about it is not going to help us. We need to start thinking about what we are going to do."

Eric shifted closer to me and pressed his arm against mine. "I do not want you to do this," he said again.

"We have no other choice. I do believe she would kill us if we refused or tried to escape, and we have a better chance of facing Damien one-on-one than her entire nest. We will do this, we will survive, and then we will be free. Yes?"

Eric leaned his head on my shoulder and nodded.

"Good."

A long silence ensued, a tense, buzzing, energy-ridden silence, which I found rather nerve-racking. I knew, without a doubt, that Eric was upset, that he still wanted me to refuse Gabrielle, but I had no choice but to do her bidding. There was nothing else I _could_ do. I had reached an impasse.

"Well, she certainly was not flirting with me tonight," I tried to joke, teasing Eric about the conclusion he had reached last night, and also just wanting to break the strained silence. I looked down at Eric, to encounter his eyes staring directly into mine. He inched forward, and kissed me gently on the lips, then withdrew.

Startled, I pulled my head away from him. "What was that for?"

"I wanted to. You know I love you, right?"

"Of course I do," I chided him, though I was confused by this sudden declaration. "I love you too, Eric. You are my child, after all."

By the look on his face, that was not quite what he wanted to hear.

It was far too early to go to bed, even though I felt exhausted already by the events of the night, but for the life of me I could not think of what to do. I was not hungry, I was not in the mood to go mingle with humans, but at the same time I did not want to sit around, alone with Eric, for the remainder of the night.

"Come on," I urged him, shaking my shoulder to force him to get up. "Let's get out of here for a bit. I think we could both use some sort of distraction. How about we go for a fly?" Eric had, fairly recently, learned how to fly, but lately there has not been much opportunity for him to use it.

"All right," he said.

And just like that, we were gone.


	13. Chapter 13

Hey everyone! I'm so sorry for the nearly year-long hiatus! I didn't think I would be gone that long, but things just kind of...happened. Again, I'm really sorry, and I'm thankful to all of you who will still read my story even after that. So, here it is finally: chapter thirteen. Reviews are greatly appreciated, and I would like to thank everyone who has already reviewed this story. I'm grateful for all your comments :D

**Chapter Thirteen:**

The stench of burnt corpses and stale blood filled the air. All around us ashen piles sifted in the gentle night breeze and, along with scattered limbs and strewn intestines and splattered blood, were all that remained of what used to be almost two dozen un-dead beings. This was the result of the battle between Gabrielle's nest and Damien's; and at the centre of that gruesome circle stood Eric and I. We were both covered in blood, soaked in it, some of it ours, most of it not. One of Eric's trouser legs was ripped away, revealing a deep gash across his thigh that bled freely. He did not pay it any mind ‒ his gaze was focused on the broken arm that dangled uselessly at my side, and the ugly wound on my torso that was already beginning to heal.

A third vampire was about, scavenging the dead, anxiously searching for something. Gabrielle's dress‒lilac tonight‒had smears of blood on the skirts as she crawled about on the ground, from entrails to entrails, looking.

"Where is it?" she kept muttering to herself. "One of them has to have it."

"What exactly are you searching for?" Eric called to her.

"It is none of your business."

"Really? I think it is," I replied, and in an instant I was in front of her, my fingers wrapped around her throat, lifting her from the ground. "We just risked our lives for you, and you have the gall to say it is none of our business?" My grip tightened, and her face grimaced in pain. "Now tell us, what are you looking for?"

"It is sentimental," she rasped, her hands clutching mine ‒ not fighting yet, but prepared to if it became necessary. "It is nothing important to anyone but me. A ring, from my mortal life. From my mother, before she died. That is all."

"And why would they have it?"

"I had a traitor a few years back. She took the ring from me and brought it to Damien as a token of her loyalty. I need to see if any of them has it."

"Have you checked Damien yet?" Eric asked.

"I did. I found nothing."

"Then perhaps it is wherever he went when he was not here in London. Perhaps he left it behind when he came here."

I put Gabrielle down, and she gave me a sharp glare and stretched her neck. "Perhaps. I had hoped that he might have brought it here. But it does not appear so." She glanced at her palms, which were coloured red, and idly wiped them on her skirts, adding to the bloodstains that were already there. She then looked back at the carcasses scattered on the ground. "I guess it is all over for now."

"Is it?" I inquired in a casual way.

Gabrielle kicked aside a clump of meat near her foot, and it made a wet sound as it landed on the ground a short distance away. "I gave you my word. You dispatch Damien, and I leave you alone. Our deal is done."

Everything had gone exactly according to plan. Damien had followed me out without a thought when I asked, gladly giving up safety to 'talk with a vampire who was older than him,' as he had cordially put it. He _had_ thought he was being cordial, but he was in fact only being arrogant and foolish. He believed he was invincible, that nothing could hurt him; that he was safe in his nest. Like a tragic hero, he ignored potential danger and let his hubris carry him; and then I came, the embodiment of the gods' will, to cut him down and end his life.

And it _was_ ended. I tore his head from his body before he was even aware that I was a threat, and fled into the dark, the mournful howls of his nest-mates following me, lifting into the night sky as they felt their leader die.

When I reached Gabrielle's, I could sense Damien's vampires hot on my trail; but Gabrielle and her vampires were prepared, and as soon as I reached them they swept out into the night, to finish what I had started. Eric was with them as well, and I knew I could not leave him alone in the battle. I knew I would join the fight.

The struggle was hot when I arrived, each vampire of almost equal strength with their opponent. Gabrielle and Eric stood in the centre of it all, both brutal in their ruthlessness; but as soon as Damien's vampires realized I was there, they congregated and set upon me. _I _had killed their leader, after all.

The battle did not last very long, for all its fierceness. Vampires died on both sides, more than I think Gabrielle had wished for on her side, until only she, Eric, myself, and three other vampires of Gabrielle's nest remained alive.

"It is done, then," I said to Gabrielle, gazing at the diminishing marks my fingers had left on her white throat. "I am sorry you did not find your ring."

"I will," she replied, and the hard edge to her voice made me believe that she would. After so many centuries, and she was still attached to a remnant of her mortal life. I pitied her for that.

"You will leave us alone?" Eric moved in closer to her, using his considerable height to intimidate her.

"I said I would. I keep my promises."

"You had better, Gabrielle," I warned, "because if I see you again, I will kill you."

She shrugged her shoulders, acting as if she did not care; but I knew it was no act ‒ she truly _did not_ care. She had gotten what she wanted. She had no more use for us, and therefore no more reason to see us. "A fair bargain. You may stay in London however long you like, I will not bother you. Just do not cause any trouble, otherwise things might get...unpleasant for you both."

"You have no more strength. Your nest is gone," Eric mocked her. "You cannot threaten us."

Gabrielle let out a brusque laugh. "Oh Eric, it is hardly like that. Yes, my nest is mostly gone for now, but I will make more. Though they will be young and weak, with enough they can overpower a vampire of any age, even your precious Maker." She lifted up a finger in front of Eric's face, a distinctively portentous gesture. "Do not presume to tell me what is and what is not; and do not be an idiot, my dear Eric, or you may find yourself looking once more into my eyes far sooner than you would wish." She lowered her finger and turned her attention on me. "Godric." She gave me the tiniest hint of a curtsy. "Thank you."

And then she was gone; and I knew I would never see her again, and it made me somewhat regretful ‒ it was not often I met with a vampire near my age; and she was fascinating, to say the least.

A burst of pain spread up my arm where Eric grabbed it, and I bared my teeth at him in a hiss.

"You need to fix that arm, before it heals like that," he dictated.

I delicately touched my arm, exploring the broken bone, feeling splintered edges almost coming through the skin. Felt how the bone had begun knitting together. Damn. "It already has. I need to re-break it and set it properly."

"Let me." Eric prodded the unnatural bend of my arm with circumspect fingers. "I will be gentler than you."

"Fine, just do it quickly before it heals even more."

With a firm grip on my wrist, he lifted up my arm. I watched him silently, preparing for the inevitable pain, but when I looked into Eric's eyes I knew he was hurting more than I was; that the thought of causing me pain was torture for him.

When he snapped my arm, he cried out for me. I made no noise, only shuddered as the agony washed through me, swelling and then slowly fading. My eyes had closed. When I opened them, Eric was staring at me, his chest rising and falling rapidly with panting breaths. He felt so much more than I did. I envied him that. Funny, considering how many centuries I had spent trying to teach him to curb his emotions, and now I envied him them.

"Thank you," I managed weakly. I could already feel the bone beginning to mend, and in a little while it would be as if it had never broken.

Eric's thigh had stopped its bleeding, the skin a raw red lesion just beginning to pale, like it was already weeks old. If he drank some of my blood, it would be gone in minutes.

"Can you believe it is already over?" Eric asked, surveying the carnage around him.

"No." I pulled down the sleeve of my shirt over my injured arm. "I never thought Gabrielle's plan would actually work, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"I never thought Damien would be so stupid as to come away with me. I thought that he would certainly see right through me and kill me. I thought for sure I would die this night."

"So you went thinking to die?"

"Yes. As did you. We are a warriors, Eric. We go into every battle prepared to die. Tonight's was no different; and Gabrielle's plan was flimsy at best. I never thought it would actually work out as it did. We were very lucky."

In the settling quiet, just an hour or so before dawn, I glanced at the ugly, abandoned buildings around us. Industrialism had begun to change many things about the world, and landscape was only one of them. I realized then that I missed the woods, missed the mountains, the rivers, the fresh air, the quiet. I missed the clean blood of farmers; I hated this soiled blood of urbanites who were being raised on coal dust and tainted water.

"I want to leave London," I declared suddenly.

Eric frowned in bewilderment. "We only just got here. You want to leave already?"

"This place, I think, is not meant for me."

"After everything we did so that we could stay here, you want to leave."

His blasé tone did nothing to hide his vexation.

"It was not by choice that we did any of it," I answered in kind. "You know we could not have run, not without having to fight still. We did what we did so we could choose; and I choose to leave London."

"I cannot believe this."

"Then you stay, Eric, and I will leave."

He stared at me, then began to laugh. "You cannot be serious."

"I am."

His laughter died out, replaced with a dark intensity. "No. I will come with you."

I sighed deeply. "I think we need to talk, Eric."

"There is nothing that needs to be talked about."

"I am afraid you are wrong."

_"You know I am right. You can see it as well as I can."_

_ "That does not mean I appreciate you giving me this...unwarranted advice."_

_ "You need to let him go."_

_ Gabrielle and I were sitting across the table from each other. She had come to the house after Eric had left to go hunting, supposedly to discuss the plan for Damien's demise; but somehow the topic turned to Eric._

_ "He is weak when he is with you," she asserted. "You have raised yourself a spaniel when he should be a wolf."_

_ "He is hardly gentle."_

_ "How long have you been together? Six hundred years? Seven hundred?" She eyed me over her hands, which were laced together in front of her face. "Have you known any other Maker to hold onto their child so long?"_

_ I had not._

_ "That is because it was never meant to be so. The Maker releases their child when the time has come; but for some reason you have not, and your time is almost run out. You will cripple him."_

_ I scoffed. "It is not so serious as that."_

_ "You think not?" she asked, challenging. "You are blind to it. Your child would fight all the world to protect you; but for himself he would do nothing. He loves you so much that he does not think of himself, only you. Is that what you wanted when you made him? A loyal dog to love you unconditionally?"_

_ "Of course not!"_

_ "Then what? Are you afraid of being alone?"_

_ I looked away from her, dark thoughts breeding in my mind. "I was alone for a thousand years before I made Eric," I said softly, recalling that time._

_ "And do you remember those years? How you felt? The isolation, the monotony...the emptiness?"_

_ I did. I had forgotten much since then, but the emptiness...It was impossible to forget such emptiness._

_ "You created him out of a need to escape the loneliness, and you have grown afraid of returning to it once Eric is gone. You need him, though you show it very little. You love him more than I think he knows, perhaps more than even you are aware of. But you have also made him need you, and he has not had the benefit of a thousand years of isolation to learn how to survive on his own. He needs to learn, and in order to do so you need to release him."_

_ Was she right? Was Eric weak because I had made him so?_

_ "Why should I listen to you?" I demanded, my words like sharpened ice. "What do you gain from telling me this?"_

_ Gabrielle let out a harsh laugh. "Contrary to your experiences, not all vampires are entirely selfish. Though," she added carelessly, "we usually are. But I am not selfish, not always. I have asked more than enough from you in forcing you to dispatch Damien, and I thought maybe I could give something in return. Some advice, as it is." She leaned back in her chair, which creaked just the slightest beneath her weight. "I am not telling you what to do, I do not have the power to do that; but I am trying to tell you what you _should_ do, for the prosperity of your child. He can only grow now if you let him go, so that he may find himself on his own."_

Staring at Eric, I realized that Gabrielle was right. Eric needed me too much; and I needed him too much. We had both become weak things.

Eric was still watching me, waiting for me to tell him what I had meant by such words.

Not yet, though. Soon, soon I must...

I smiled at him. "Never mind, Eric. Come, let us go home."


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen:**

Gulls cried as they floated above my head, their wings spread wide to catch the steady breeze blowing across the ocean. Their calls echoed over the roiling water in loud, discordant notes, and each time those notes reached my ears, memory flashed painfully before my eyes. I had seen a lot of gulls during my mortal life: large, unattractive birds that cawed incessantly as they searched for food, searched for perch, searched for anything; their white-grey wings flapping overhead, sometimes so close I could feel the air pushing against my skin and ruffling my hair. I had never really liked gulls, always thought they were noisy and cowardly. I had always wondered why they ever existed in the first place.

But there were no gulls now. Their cries were only part of my imagination. I had not seen or heard a gull in many centuries. They were mostly daylight creatures, and vampires, well...we tend to be creatures of night. Even so, every time I approached a body of water that was large enough that I could not see the opposite bank of, my mind instinctively remembered the sound of gulls, playing it like a broken instrument that would not stop until I walked away from the water. Music from my mortal life, that I had somehow not forgotten despite everything else that I _had_ forgotten. Such a raucous, grating, _normal_ sound.

Black waves rolled up onto a black shore. There was no moon.

"What are we doing here?" Eric asked me, his voice pitched to carry over the sound of splashing water.

I stood away from him, pointed towards the sea. The wind sent my clothes flapping around my body ‒ a cold, early spring wind. It was weeks after the fight with Damien, after Gabrielle sealed her end of the deal and left us alone. Our lives had fallen back into rhythmic monotony, a dull pulse of feeding, sleeping, feeding, sleeping. There was nothing else, and I knew that something needed to change before the monotony consumed us.

"We are waiting," I called to Eric.

He walked toward me, a giant spectre with bare feet digging into the sand. "Waiting for what?"

"For the right moment," I whispered.

The tang of salt scented the air. It was almost time. Almost time...

"Eric." My voice was smooth as I turned to look at him. My magnificent child. "There is something that I think needs to be said."

"What is it?"

I inhaled deeply, trying to block my throat up with salt. But it was too late to stop now; this needed to be done. I had spent many hours trying to figure out the right way to say what I needed to say; but looking at Eric, I knew there was no right way. There was no way that would hurt him less. Do it fast, then.

A single peal of thunder rumbled in the distance, and the wind blew stronger, pushing viciously against me.

"I am leaving."

Startled, Eric pulled back, but then he slowly began to nod his head, as if what I had said made sense.

"Of course. If you really want to leave, we will go. I know you do not like it here."

Poor, poor Eric. You try so hard to please me.

"You know that is not what I meant."

In a darkness that mortal eyes could not see through, I watched as Eric's expression gradually transformed. Though never exactly soft, the planes and angles of his face all simultaneously tightened and hardened, turning bleak as he tried to shut me out and barricade all his feelings behind a wall of golden-haired ice. It frightened me. He had never looked at me so; he looked almost like the monster he was meant to be ‒ like the monster that I was. But I could not let the fear deter me.

"I am leaving you, Eric," I said as cogently as I could.

"Why?"

"Because it is what is necessary."

"Who says?" His tone nearly froze me, as if he were speaking from the coldest depths of winter.

"I say."

His jaws, which had opened wide in preparation to rebut, snapped shut. My word was the only word he hardly ever argued with, especially of late. My loyal dog. That is what Gabrielle had called him; and she was right.

"I do not understand," he growled, heat returning.

I glanced back out over the ocean. If I looked hard enough, maybe I could see the New World. It was there, far across the water. I knew it was there, even if I could not see it.

"Not now, but in time you will." A particularly strong wind picked up the bronze pendant that dangled from a leather thong against my chest, tugging it away from my body. It was a trinket I had picked up somewhere in my long past. "And you will thank me in the end."

"If you leave me, I will never forgive you." His icy barricade crumbled, and the fear and anger and anguish poured forth.

I could not look at him. If I looked into those tormented eyes, I would relent, and we would return to what we had. I could not relent; not if I was to help us both. Help him.

"Perhaps you will not," I acknowledged. "It pains me that I might hurt you so, but this must be done."

"Pain? _Pain?_" Eric stormed forward and grabbed my shoulders, forcing me to look at him. "What pain? There is nothing there anymore!" He waved a hand in front of my face, trying to provoke something, some sort of response. "You are the same, night after night. There is no sadness in you, no joy, no love, no fear, no anger. You are as untouched by emotion as the...as the sea is by a single drop of rain." He released me with a shove, his lips curling in a snarl. "You feel no pain."

I stumbled and fell to the ground, and remained there. My head was bowed, my hair shading Eric from my sight. "I must go," I whispered, my fists burrowed in the sand.

"Then go!" Eric exploded, his words reverberating even over the roar of the waves. "Go, and leave me be!"

I made to get up, but before I could move Eric was over me, holding me down as he collapsed to the ground in front of me, his hands gripping my face.

"Don't go," he breathed, and his voice hitched. "You cannot leave."

"I must."

"But why!"

"Because you need me too much; and I need you too much. I have made you weak, and you will make me weak, too."

"That is not true. You have made me strong. You have taught me everything." He said it so plaintively, so miserably, that I felt my resolve weakening. How could I abandon my child? How could I do such a thing?

But he was not a child, not anymore. He needed to be a man now, and to do that I must let him go. I _had_ to go.

"But I have not taught you to be alone," I explained, my words a quiet hum. "That is one thing I cannot teach you, but you must learn on your own. It is time for you to learn that lesson, now. I am crippling you, by keeping you with me."

"No." I glanced up, and he was shaking his head adamantly back and forth. "You are not crippling me. I will not let you leave."

"I know." Tears stung the backs of my eyes, but I forced them away. I would not cry in front of him. "But I will leave regardless."

"Then I will follow you."

I smiled at him, a weak, dim smile. "No, you will not. This command I say as your Maker: you will not follow me; not for at least a century, when you have had some time to experience isolation."

Eric curled further into himself, though he would not surrender my face. "You cannot do this to me," he protested faintly. "Why are you doing this?"

"To make you stronger. To make you a better vampire."

He continued to shake his head.

I let him remain like that for a while, holding me, but then I gently untangled myself from him, despite his tightening grip. I stood up slowly, and gazed at the curled ball at my feet.

"It is time."

I moved away from Eric, taking heavy, reluctant strides into the cold water. I heard him shuffling as he got to his own feet, then the sound of splashing water as he followed me into the ocean.

"Where will you go?" he asked, sounding thick with tears. He had realized there was no more point in arguing.

"To the New World, maybe. I want to see the wilderness there."

I stepped further into the water, and Eric trailed close behind. I looked up at the cloudy sky. Here and there, through gaps, I could see stars dotting the darkness. One star was particularly bright, and it seemed to be shining down on me. It was time.

Tears seeped down my cheeks. I had not been able to hold them in. I did not bother to wipe them away.

"Oh," I said to Eric, still turned away from him, "there is one more thing I have to tell you before I go. There are times when I may have done things to make you question what I am about to say, but you _must_ listen to me on this. You _must_." I paused. "There is no such thing as right or wrong, Eric. There is only survival. Either you survive, or you die. You must do whatever is necessary to survive, even if you believe it is wrong. There is no wrong. Survival is all. Do you understand me?"

He murmured, "I understand."

"Then this is goodbye." A tear fell into the water, the red quickly dispersing till it seemed as if it had never fallen. I looked at Eric, whose eyes widened when he saw my face. "Know that these tears are for you, my child." I tried to smile again at him, but it would not take hold.

Eric stood with his shoulders hunched up, and his brow quivering ever so slightly. He looked so pathetic, as pathetic as I had ever seen him. His yellow hair blew up around him, tangling around itself, and his blue eyes spoke to me of future years of hurt and anger, years that would be caused by me. By my leaving him.

I gazed at him longingly, wanting nothing so much as to stay with him. But what I was doing was right. It _had_ to be right.

Tears dripped down Eric's face too, and I reached out a hand and wiped one away. I brought the blood to my mouth, and licked it away. Eric watched it all like it held some profound meaning.

My eyes and lungs burned as I stared at Eric. I had to leave, now, before I could not leave at all.

"Please know," I said, and my voice trembled. I stopped and cleared my throat, and then lifted the pendant from around my neck. "Eric, I do love you. Truly, I do." I dropped the pendant into the water.

Eric's lips parted. "Godric‒"

But I did not let him finished. I took off before I could hear what he had to say, fearing that if I heard the words, I would no longer have the strength to leave. I already had almost too little strength.

* * *

It was not until many years later that something occurred to startle me out of my solitary stupor. I had been absently watching a village in the Province of Canada being ravaged by an outbreak of typhus, and passively marvelling at how something so insensate‒a disease‒could kill more people within the span of a month than I had in over nearly nineteen hundred years, when I felt it. It was like someone was tugging on some invisible string that I had not known was attached to me, a string that was hooked deep into my heart. It was intensely uncomfortable, and sent me to trembling as I fought against the pull; but no matter how hard I fought, the pull grew stronger still, until I had to give in and let myself go. I could feel myself expanding, growing painfully, and for a long moment I thought I might be ripped apart.

But then it suddenly stopped.

I found myself lying on the ground, panting wildly. When I had the strength, I looked up and around me, but the scenery had not changed. Nothing looked changed. Nothing _was_ changed, except for me.

And then I felt something else.

For so long, I had only ever been able to sense Eric through our bond. I felt his emotions, his desires, his fears. I could feel him, no matter how far away he was. I felt his anger at my abandoning him, his loneliness, his aching. But now it seemed, if I delved deep enough, I could sense another on our bond. Another, whose feelings were much weaker than Eric's but whose presence was now known. Another vampire.

Eric had made a child. The stupid boy had not even lasted half a century by himself.

I was surprised at how angry I felt. It seemed like everything I had done, all the pain I had gone through to leave Eric so that he might be able to find himself, had been for nought. He had went and made himself a new companion, to take up the seat where I had once sat in his heart. He had not been able to survive on his own. I had raised a weak child.

My teeth ached from clenching, and my fingernails dug grooves into the palms of my hands.

_But think_, I said to myself, trying to pacify the rage. _Leaving Eric hurt him far more than it hurt you. He is trying to survive the only way he knows: by having someone at his side, someone to ease his suffering. Will you go back to him, and reclaim your throne?_

I knew I would not. Not after all these years.

I sighed ruefully. I would let Eric keep his companion, if it helped him to carry on. So long as he survived. So long as I knew it helped him to stay alive.

**End of Part Two**

P.S. I know that in the show Godric doesn't leave Eric until after WWII, but that didn't fit in with my idea for this story. I'd also had this part planned out since before Season 3 began, ha ha ha (though it took me this long to write it).


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen:**

**Sorry, this is an extremely short chapter. I thought it worked better ending it where I did. P.S. The next chapter will be very short, too.

I can remember the exact moment when everything changed for me; when everything I had learned, everything I had taught Eric, became obsolete. And such a small thing it was, too, that was the cause of it all.

I was at Wounded Knee Creek, having arrived at early nightfall, only hours after the 7th Cavalry had massacred the Lakota Sioux Indians. Reflecting back on the aftermath of that slaughter, I remembered thinking that I had never seen something so brutal before, something so savage and gruesome. Something so regretful.

The dead and wounded were the only things that had been left behind. I went in amongst the carnage, looking about, taking note of the survivors. There were few, and those who had survived this long would likely die very soon. Even still, I continued searching, not knowing what I was looking for, yet unable to stop.

Then I saw something that made me pause. Sticking out from beneath a pile of corpses was a little brown hand, its fingers feebly moving, struggling for freedom. I went to the hand and heaved aside the dead bodies, until I unearthed the trembling form of a Sioux child, hardly five years old. The boy looked at me as I uncovered him, but when he saw my face he started backwards and tried to hide his own in the stinking flesh of a dead woman beside him. I gazed at him sorrowfully. He preferred a rancid corpse over the face of his saviour. Was I really so frightening?

I crouched down and laid a cautious finger on his arm. "It is all right," I said gently, though I did not know his language. I hoped that he might understand me still.

The boy flinched away from my touch, but eventually he turned to look at me again. His black eyes were round and frightened, and had seen far more than any child his age should ever see. They pleaded with me, begged me to undo what had already been done. I had many powers, but that was not one of them. I wished desperately that it could be, so that I could return this boy to his family, return him to peace and innocence. Take away his pain and darkness.

Tears welled up in those dark surfaces, and I bundled him into my arms. He resisted at first, but soon his frail limbs were gripping me tightly as his shoulders shook with heaving sobs. His soul seemed to be crying out in pain.

I gazed around me at the massacre. How could anyone be this savage? How could anyone kill so many innocent people with hardly a thought? How could they torment this little boy?

Then it hit me: _I_ was that savage. _I_ had killed hundreds, thousands of innocent people without a thought. _I_ had never cared about them, about the pain that would be left behind by their deaths. _I _only cared about slaking my thirst. About surviving.

I looked down at the glossy black head burrowed into my shoulder. How many children had I left like this, having taken their parents, their families, from them? How many innocent lives had I ruined, even though I had said once that I would never hurt a child again? How many?

Feeling the rapidly beating heartbeat pressing against my chest, feeling the despair of this child, I wondered how I had done it. How I had been able to kill so readily and so freely.

That was when I changed. Holding that boy, I felt a sudden accumulation of sadness for all the pain and hurt I had caused to so many over nearly two millennia. It weighed down on me, crushing me, making me feel heavy and leaden; and indescribably grieved, as if I had lost them all, too ‒ all the friends and families and loved ones that I had taken away.

And then something was aroused inside me. Something strange and foreign. Something returning to its proper place, from which it had been forced away when I had joined the ranks of the undead. I felt compassion. A basic, human emotion; and it re-emerged within me, and I could not, dared not, ignore it.

It was in that moment that I knew: I would not do it anymore. I _could_ not do it anymore. I could never harm another human, if by all the strength inside me I could avoid it. Never again.

The boy fell asleep in my arms, and I took him away from the scene of horror and held him for the entire night. Just before dawn, I covered the boy in my jacket, and quietly slipped away. I think I was trying to make up for all the hurt I had caused in over a thousand years. One boy saved, for the thousands I had killed. One right, for millions of wrongs.

**End of Part Three**


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen:**

"Why did you come? Did you think that, by giving yourself up to me, you would set things right with God and secure a place in Heaven? That by handing yourself over for punishment, you would achieve redemption?"

I sat motionless in the small room, letting the voice wash over me. Every night it said more of the same thing: redemption, punishment, pain. At first, the man's words bothered me, for I'd often had the same debate with myself since I had decided to go to him. But now I began to see that these words were the only words the man knew: he could speak of nothing else, for he knew nothing else. Only God, religion, and torture. Such a sad, warped existence.

"Heaven has no place for you," he continued. "You belong in Hell. Hell is reserved for monstrosities like you."

"Perhaps you're right," I replied softly, my head bowed as I gazed calmly at the floor beneath my bare feet. "Maybe Hell is what I deserve."

The man pulled back from the bars, startled. I don't know why it shocked him so much ‒ we had gone through this same ritual almost every night for weeks, since I had given myself to him. But every time, his eyes widened and his fists tightened on the bars as he jerked back upon hearing me speak. It was like it was the only thing his brainwashed mind could think of doing.

Suddenly, the man pressed his face against the silver bars. "God hates you," he hissed, his white teeth flashing menacingly in the partial darkness. "You are an evil abomination."

"But no more than I hate myself," I whispered.

"You drink human blood to continue your dark existence. You murder innocent people to survive."

I lifted my head and looked at the man, and he was frightened at the sight my blank face, though he tried to hide it behind his righteous rage. "I am quite aware of that fact, thank you," I stated simply.

"You deserve punishment. You deserve to die for your sins."

"And isn't that why I am here? Isn't that why I came to you?"

He had no response for that. He glared at me through feverish eyes, then abruptly spun and walked away, his dress shoes making loud slapping noises on the wooden steps that led up out of the basement.

Steve Newlin was an idiot, I determined. But he was the idiot who would give me exactly what I deserved.


	17. Chapter 17

*Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing my story. It's all very greatly appreciated :D And I hope you all continue to read and review (despite my inconsistent posting schedule, for which I apologize).****

Chapter Seventeen:

The all-encompassing monotony of captivity had slowly, agonizingly consumed me, and I had finally grown tired of the constant waiting. For weeks now, I had been waiting, waiting and thinking ‒ thinking about what was to happen, and waiting for it to come. My patience was fraying, growing thinner, and as the excitement of the Fellowship of the Sun members swelled around me, I neared my breaking point. I had waited so long for this, and I couldn't wait much longer.

There was incessant chatter up above from the humans, hushed whispers about the holy bonfire that was to come, voices filled with breathless anticipation. Those whispers were never meant to reach my ears, but still they did; and I didn't care. I wanted the holy bonfire. I wanted justice.

It got so bad that at one point I nearly asked Steve to finish me now, at that very moment, just to put my waiting at an end. But looking into his inflamed brown eyes, I couldn't do it ‒ not if I wanted my death to mean something. This was suicide, certainly‒I was not trying to decorate that fact‒, but it was suicide for a cause. For the betterment of relations between humans and vampires. If I died alone, in the dark, everything I hoped to make up for, every horror, every mindless kill, would haunt me into whatever awaited me at the final death.

There had only been one change in my colourless existence with the Fellowship, and that was when, one night, for no apparent reason, Steve came and unlocked my door, and left it open.

"What is this for?" I asked, peering cautiously at the narrow gap.

Steve shrugged. "You're not going to try leaving, so it doesn't matter."

I arched an eyebrow. "Compassion? For a vampire?"

Steve gripped the keys tightly in his fist. "Well, if you would rather..." and he began to close the door again.

"No, no," I hastened, jumping up from the little wooden bench in my cell. Steve started back at the movement, but then fought to hold himself firm, to look unafraid. "Thank you."

He gazed at me in a curious way, his head tilted to the side. "You really don't want to leave, do you?"

I re-seated myself. "No. I have no reason to want to leave. What I want holds me here."

Steve's eyes narrowed doubtfully, and then he let out an airy snort. "Oh well." He disappeared, but a moment later reappeared. "Mind you, this ain't something permanent. You'll only be let out when I'm feeling...generous. And the basement door's going to be kept locked."

I held my tongue, not daring to comment on Steve's 'generosity,' and he vanished again. The door at the top of the basement steps opened and locked shut behind Steve, and then I was alone once again.

I walked to my cell door and slipped through the opening Steve had left me, careful not to touch the door itself ‒ it was silver plated, made to hold vampires. Or, at least, vampires that wanted to be captives. Though it was silver, the door itself was weak. Any vampire who could bear the touch of silver for more than a second could easily break the door open. Lucky for Steve, I was a willing prisoner.

The basement was a large, tunnel-like area. The main hallway was wide enough for two men abreast, and high enough that Eric would be able to walk without crouching. It branched off to three narrower tunnels, and at the end of each of these smaller ways was a room. One room was an office-like room, with a little desk and a computer. The other room was just a big empty space, filled with nothing but a broken church pew and a thick layer of dust. The last room was actually split into two: one looked like a storage room, having only racks upon racks of cardboard boxes packed with papers. The other room, separated from the storage room by a thin wall and a wooden door, was Steve's weapons room. Guns were everywhere, as well as blades, crossbows, bombs, and other forms of armament. I left that room quickly, uneasy being around so many guns. I was actually surprised that Steve had left the weapons room so easily accessible, especially when he had knowingly let me out. Perhaps he was trying to taunt me with how easy it would be to kill him, or myself, if I'd truly wanted to.

On my way out of the last corridor, I noticed‒which I hadn't on my way in‒that the large door at the entrance was also silver-coated. I quickly tested its strength, and saw that it was much stronger than the door to my cell. If this door had been closed and locked, I don't think even I would've had the strength to open it. Maybe Steve didn't always leave his weapons so unsecured. Most certainly taunting me, then.

My exploration lasted only a short time, and once it was finished everything returned to its regular tedium. I went back to my cell and waited‒like I had been doing for what felt like an eternity. Waiting for change. Waiting for death. But right now, I was waiting for something much more insignificant: I was waiting for the sun to set, so that I could sleep and forget the insipidity of my life.

* * *

It was four days later when, quite suddenly, things changed. It occurred during the day, which means that the noise and impact were powerful indeed to have woken me from slumber. As I groggily regained consciousness, I was hardly able to decipher certain sounds from the barrage of noise that assaulted me: gasping, panicked breathing; barely contained whimpers; and pounding hearts; and with all this came the thick, honey-sweet stench of fear.

My eyelids flickered heavily. Something was going on. Something was wrong. As if from a great distance, Steve Newlin's voice came to me, thin and tinny sounding. Next to his, I could just make out Gabe's bass rumble; and then, a piercing scream cut through everything. The screamer's voice was unknown to me, just like their smell and the sound, but I knew it was a woman, and I knew that there was a man with her, also afraid.

I tried to rouse myself more, to watch, to learn more, but the weight of the sun pulled me under like a seductive drug, and then I knew no more.

* * *

_"Godric..."_

_"Godric..." _

It danced at the very edge of my awareness, beckoning me, crying for my attention. I disregarded it, and fell back into a deeper trance.

* * *

_"Godric..."_

_ "Godric..."_

_ "Godric..."_

_Go away_.

"_Godric..."_

It was moving rapidly, creating small ripples in my world of black peacefulness. Like a gnat flying around your ear, it could not be ignored for long.

"_Godric..."_

"..._hear me..."_

That was different. It was like it was...trying to talk to me.

Instead of ignoring it now, I strained to focus on the disturbance. But my focus kept slipping, unable to resist the allure of the dark stillness of sleep. Of silence.

"..._you hear me..."_

_ "Isabel...Eric..."_

Eric. Why did I know that name?

"_Isabel...Eric...sent us..."_

_ "Godric..."_

_ "GODRIC!"_

I woke in a rush, bolting upright. My mouth was open in a snarl, and my fangs had come out. My hands were clawed, digging into the ground, as if I had tried to dig myself away from the voice that had screamed at me. That voice...

I shook my head dizzily, trying to gather my senses, trying to settle my nerves. Where had the voice come from?

Everything was quiet now. Full darkness had fallen, but there was no evidence to suggest that someone had been yelling, screaming. Screaming my name.

I crept up to the bars on my door and peered out, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary.

_"Eric sent us..._"

No, that can't be right. Eric didn't even know where I was, or that I had disappeared. Unless Isabel had called him. But Godric never spoke of Eric to anyone. How would she know to call him?

I pushed at my door, but it was locked again. Steve Newlin obviously hadn't wanted to risk me waking up and coming after him when...

The humans.

Everything came crashing back. The struggle, the kidnapping, the woman's scream. I listened carefully, to see if I could hear anything from the humans, but there was nothing. Not even the hint of a pulse. Maybe they managed to get away; or maybe they were dead. I didn't smell death, though.

Nearly two hours later, Steve came to the basement and released me from my cell. I instantly went to the big silver door, but it was sealed tight. Steve came and stood next to me, and gave me a tight-lipped smile.

"So you heard that, did you? I might burn them, too, for associating with vampires."

My muscles tensed, and I gave him a cold look. "Aren't you also associating with a vampire?"

Steve's smile curdled, shifting into a snarl. "It's not the same thing. And don't even bother trying to get in to save them." He rapped a knuckle against the door, which made a dense, solid sound. "Silver-plated, industrial strength. Same with the walls. But you already knew that, didn't you?" He gave me a wolfish grin. "You can't save them, even if you wanted to. Hell, a vampire can't save anybody ‒ they can't even save themselves."

Then he left, and I was left staring at the door for a while longer, before sighing and turning away.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen:**

I only ever caught dim snippets of the conversations between the two humans, as most of their talks occurred during the day, when I slept. Their voices would float over me as I lay comatose in my cell, and sometimes I could remember parts of their talks upon waking. The most valuable information I'd heard so far were their names: Hugo Ayers and Sookie Stackhouse.

Sookie's last name in particular caught my attention, for I'd heard that name before. Someone Steve had talked about. And Hugo. Isabel mentioned a human named Hugo once.

They had been here for two days, now. The sun had just fallen, and as I awoke I immediately sensed an agitation in the atmosphere that hadn't been there when I went to sleep. Sookie and Hugo's voiced drifted toward me.

"...before you know it, you're somebody you don't even recognize." That was Hugo.

"So you went to the Fellowship because you can't _control_ yourself?" Even through cement walls and silver doors, the incredulity was thick in Sookie's retort.

Hugo perceived to be remarkably calm for a man who had just been, I quickly gathered, found a traitor. There was no more jittery nervousness about him. He actually seemed almost relieved; as if he was glad he didn't have to hide anymore. "I begged Isabel to turn me, you know. It was the only way we could be together _as equals_. But see, they don't want us to be equals. No, she was just using me, the same way that Bill's been using you."

So Hugo _was_ Isabel's human. Poor Isabel ‒ it will pain her to discover her human companion was so weak-willed and spiteful as to turn traitor.

"I mean, a telepath's got to be a real trophy for a vampire."

"Shut up," Sookie snapped.

She was a telepath. That was interesting.

"All they care about is their own kind," Hugo pushed, "okay? That's why I joined the Fellowship."

Then everything fell hushed between them.

In a certain way, I could understand Hugo's sentiment. He felt used by Isabel, and it shamed him that he had let himself be used; so he retaliated, and turned to the Fellowship in the hopes of regaining his pride. But the reality was that all he had done was shame himself _further_ in betraying everyone; and he would have to live with that, if he lived at all.

I paced my room for a while, trying to think things through, while simultaneously trying not to think at all ‒ it had nothing to do with me anymore, even if it concerned Isabel. Let her deal with the sanctions. Let her make the decisions. Soon, I would be able to do nothing, so why concern myself with these things? It was all out of my hands, now.

And just as I had settled myself toward inaction, a storm broke.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen:**

With loud, thundering steps, Gabe crashed down the stairs to the basement, waves of hot anger rolling off of him. He turned down the hall toward Sookie and Hugo, his fury growing greater and darker. What happened next I could only hear, not see.

"Gabe?" Hugo exclaimed when the big man opened the door to their room. "What happened to your face? Listen, she knows everything, which never would have happened if you hadn't kept me locked down here with a goddamn mind-reader. I hope the reverend knows that I'm going to need protection now."

Then there was the sound of flesh hitting flesh, and something fell heavily to the floor. I smelled a faint trace of blood on the air.

"You and your moron brother think you can make an asshole out of me!" Gabe shouted as he threw an object against the metal racks. "That's what you think, huh?"

"Get your filthy hands off me!" Sookie yelled.

"What's wrong? Your own kind not good enough for you, huh? What if I show you what you've been missing!"

Sookie screamed, the same frantic scream she had let out when she had first been taken. I deduced what Gabe planned to do to her, and felt a flash of rage. I had known her same terror once, long ago; and though the past was the past–and it was Sookie's terror instead of mine–the resentment welled up inside me, and I knew I wanted to save her, to shield her from the violence. No one deserved to be traumatized in such a way.

I threw myself against the cell door, and the fragile lock broke apart and clattered to the floor. My shoulder singed where it had pressed against the silver coating, but the pain was minor and insignificant. I raced away, down the hall, toward Sookie's screams.

When I saw the other–substantial–silver door, I realized I hadn't thought what I would do to get through it, but in his haste and fury Gabe had forgotten to close the door. I slipped through the gap and moved silently toward the storage room.

Seeing into the room was bizarre and troubling, bringing sight to all the sounds I'd heard. The boxes on the metal racks had been knocked around in all the fuss, and loose papers were strewn everywhere. On the ground were droplets of blood, a trail leading the pursuer to their mark. Hugo was unconscious on the floor, part of his face swelling from where Gabe had hit him. And there was Gabe on the ground, his back muscles tensing rigidly as he resisted a struggling girl pinned beneath him. Her limbs flailed wildly against him, but to no avail – he was too strong for her.

"Scream for me, baby," Gabe hissed, his fingers grasping at his crotch, trying to unzip himself.

Not too strong for me, though.

And before I could really digest everything, I rushed over to Gabe and fisted my hand in his shirt collar, heaving him viciously off Sookie.

She continued to struggle, her nails dragging at the air, until she realized that there was nothing left to fight. Her chest heaving from exertion, she sat up and looked at Gabe, who dangled in my grip a few inches off the ground, then to me.

Her brown eyes widened in bewilderment as they took me in. She knew exactly who I was, or who I was supposed to be, and the one who stood before her was not what she had imagined ‒ the one who had created Eric. Surely I should be bigger, older, more barbaric-looking; I shouldn't be so young, so small, so child-like. Surely I couldn't be Eric's Maker.

"Godric?" she inquired, doubtful.

I only stared at her, unable to think of an adequate answer, and then instead turned my attention to Gabe, whose face was turning red as the collar pressed against his windpipe. He tried to grab my hand, to pry it off, but as well try to move a mountain with a plastic shovel.

"Godric," he grunted, becoming alarmed when he saw I wasn't letting him go. "Godric, it's me."

"I know who you are," I hissed in his ear, my voice pitched low for his hearing only, and tightened my grip. "I know _what_ you are. You're as much a monster as I am." His pulse jumped and quickened, but before panic could truly set in, I snapped his neck.

It is an odd sensation, how something that I had once revelled in, sought out desperately in my early days, now only left me barren and cold inside. Staring into Gabe's glassy eyes, I felt no urge to tear his head off and gorge on his blood, as I had centuries ago. I felt no lust for his fear, no desire for his pain, no arousal for the blood sloshing inside him. I felt nothing for him, only hollowness.

Sookie watched with suspect as I carelessly tossed Gabe's body aside, but somehow there was no more fear in her. She had feared Gabe, but she didn't fear me.

_If only she knew what I used to‒_

But my thought didn't finish, for something unexpected happened. From out of nowhere, I suddenly felt an electric hum rise in me, vibrating and tingling inside me. The sensation quickly built up, until it was crackling through me, and I felt like I was the centre of a maelstrom. My nerves were on fire, driving me to the brink of insanity with its deftly woven mix of pleasure and pain. It lasted for but an instant, then diminished to a gentle purr.

A moment later, a noise on the floor above us drew Sookie's attention. "Bill!" she cried happily, but I was already shaking my head.

"No." I knew it wasn't Bill. I closed my eyes to shut everything else out, and concentrated inwardly, on the bond between Eric and me. I could feel him now, as I hadn't felt him since the night I left him. There was an air of frenetic determination to him, now that he was so close to me. The feel of him, of the bond buzzing so warmly and lively, was intoxicating, it nearly made my head spin; but threaded throughout the happiness were coarse, black strings of dread. I had never wanted him to find me. I had wanted everything to be over before he even knew.

But even so, I couldn't stop the words from coming forth, beckoning:

"I am here, my child. Down here."

And when I opened my eyes there he stood, just inside the room, staring at me as if I were a god made flesh and come before him.

"Godric," he sighed, and I could feel the sigh inside me; feel it through our bond. He collapsed to his knees before me, his head bowed in the perfect verisimilitude of subservience.

"Godric," he whispered again.

I looked down at the top of his golden head, and felt again the mix of pleasure and pain that the bond had woken within me ‒ pleasure at seeing Eric, at having him near me; and pain, at knowing I would hurt him, knowing he wouldn't understand me. Why did he have to come to me?

I gazed at Eric, and spoke in a level voice‒trying to hide the sudden frenzy growing within me‒, saying the first thing that came to mind. "You're a fool for sending humans after me."

He turned his eyes upwards, staring unflinching into my face, and the intensity there was almost too much for me to bear. But I kept my face in its cool mask, hammering it into place so as to not let too much through. It wouldn't be good to reveal too much, especially not to Eric.

So inwardly consumed was I, I hadn't realized that Eric was speaking. "...savages, they seek to destroy you."

_Naive little Eric_._ You won't understand... Don't look at me._

"I am aware of what they have planned, Eric." And turning away from the startled look in his eyes, I glanced at Hugo, who was still inert on the floor. "This one betrayed you," I said, motioning to the human, grateful for the distraction.

Sookie, who had been watching our exchange silently, jumped up and came over to Eric and me. "He's with the Fellowship," she explained. "They set a trap for us."

Not even a golden eyelash flickered in her direction. "How long has it been since you fed?"

"I require very little blood anymore."

Before he could respond, an alarm began to blare, sending strobes of flashing light across the room. The Fellowship had been alerted to Eric's break-in.

_It is time to leave_.

But _could_ _I_ leave? Why should I? What good would it do?

Sookie's heart was pounding in her chest when she saw neither Eric nor I were moving, growing increasingly anxious as she waited for us to decide what should be done. Such an innocent girl. She, at least, didn't deserve to be caught again. She deserved her freedom. She needed to get out.

"Save the human," I commanded Eric. He stared sullenly at me. "Go on."

His jaw set stubbornly. "I am not leaving your side until you're‒"

"I can take care of myself." _Or have you forgotten who I am, my child? Who I used to be?_

Sookie rushed forward, eager to be away. "Come on, we have to go!"

Eric was still on his knees before me, and didn't seem like he would ever move.

_Get up, you fool! _

Finally, though, he did; and I saw the sheen in his eyes ‒ an indignant rage that the Fellowship had dared to capture me, dared to lay their hands on me, his Maker. I knew that look too well; it was one I had worn often in my life. The look of murder.

I held Eric's gaze with my own; steady, authoritarian. "Spill no blood on your way out," I instructed him, and Eric had to look away to break the hold I had put over him. "Go."

Sookie dashed away and Eric stood aside to let her past, but he never took his eyes off me. Just before reaching the door, he gave me one last, silent entreaty. _Will you come? Will you come to me?_ it pleaded. He had sensed that there was something more going on here, something below the surface that he didn't yet understand.

Then he was gone from my sight, if not my other senses. The frenzy threatened to overwhelm me. I looked down at Hugo, and sighed.

_Will I come? Eric, why? Why should I?_


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Twenty:**

I paced the small room as I frantically tried to think. On one hand, death. If I stayed here, and if I could make Eric leave peacefully, Steve Newlin could still have his holy bonfire, and the world could have justice for the sins I had committed. But on the other hand, Eric. He would never let me stay here, and he would kill anyone who tried to harm me, even if I had volunteered for it. He just wouldn't understand.

I paced for a long time, carefully avoiding Hugo's still body, trying to reason everything out.

I could sense everything that was happening above me, but I zoned it out as I tried to make a decision; I heard gunshots, and stayed; I couldn't even go when Eric was taken and chained in silver. He would free himself, I reasoned; Eric was a resilient being.

Do I stay, or do I go? If I went, what would there be for me? If I stayed...could I even stay, now? How would I ever be able to convince the others that I _wanted_ to stay?

Then Stan arrived, in a torrent of bloodlust, eager to kill any and all humans who were in the Fellowship, regardless of whether they were innocent of capturing me or not. "Destroy the humans. All of them," he said to the other vampires, his gravelly voice sinister in its delight.

And I knew I couldn't waste anymore time trying to make a decision. If I didn't go up now, they would all die. All the humans.

Everything inside the church was chaos when I emerged from the basement, with humans running every which way, trying to escape the avenging vampires. I went up to the balcony, to get the higher ground. I saw that Eric was now free from the chains, as I had hoped he would be, with Sookie and William Compton at his side; and there was Stan, holding a man in his grasp, his fangs brushing his neck. He would have the first blood. I was almost too late. I needed to stop everything before it began, before anyone died.

I walked to the edge of the balcony. "Enough." My voice reverberated throughout the church, quelling all other noise. Everyone froze, only their eyes moving as they searched for the source of the sound, turning to me. My eyes, though, were focused on Stan, standing in the middle of everything. "You came for me, I assume." He felt my authority, I could see it in the rigidness of his muscles, but he was still poised to strike, his fangs digging deeper into the human's flesh. "Underling," I warned.

With great reluctance, Stan acknowledged my presence. "Yes, sheriff."

"These people have not harmed me." I slid my gaze to Steve Newlin, who lay on the steps at the front of the church, the green paint visible on his forehead from where he had been shot with a paint gun. I felt only distasteful pity for him now, seeing him fall from grace in his followers' eyes as they realized that their leader was a psychopath, willing to kill himself and others for his beliefs. "You see, Mr. Newlin," I chided, "we can coexist rather peacefully." He shot me a dark glare, but I disregarded it. I looked to the other humans in the Church. "I do not wish to create bloodshed when none is called for. Help me set an example. If we leave you in peace, will you do the same?"

Rising ungracefully to his knees before Eric, Steve Newlin favoured me with a seething remark: "I will not negotiate with sub-humans." Then he loosened his tie with one hand, bared his neck, and exposed his life blood to Eric in a mad act. "Kill me. Do it. Jesus will protect me."

"I am actually older than your Jesus," I retorted, tired of this man's ego, his crazed religiosity, his insanity. He might have been able to give me what I wanted, but that did not mean I liked him. I despised what he stood for, his beliefs the very antithesis of mine own. So the startled look now in his eyes was a small sweetness to me. "I wish I could have known him, but I missed it."

I went down to the ground level, faster than the human eyes could see, and seized Newlin by his coat collar. I pulled him to his feet and forced him to stand before all his followers, displaying him ‒ making them see just what a wretched creature they had chosen to obey. "Good people, who of you is willing to die for this man's madness?"

As I suspected, no one volunteered. They all looked at one another, but no one wanted to come forth. "That's what I thought. Stand down, everyone. People, go home. It's over now."

Slowly the humans began to mill out, some shooting us sharp looks, others staring at us in surprise. In my grip, Steve was squirming as he realized that everyone was deserting him; that no one would stand up for him. "Please! Don't leave me!" he cried out.

I threw him to the ground. "We have not harmed them, so they choose to not to harm us, even if you would wish it otherwise, Mr. Newlin. I daresay my faith in humankind is stronger than yours." I surveyed all the vampires surrounding me, who were watching and waiting for whatever was to happen. "Come." It was time for them to leave, and myself too. I couldn't stay here now. There would be no holy bonfire at the Church of the Fellowship of the Sun.

Cowboy boots knocked against the wooden floor as Stan approached me, the anger and excitement still rolling off him in waves. "Sir, after what these humans have done to you‒"

I cut him off. "I said come."

With an unhappy grunt he obeyed, and so did the rest. Exiting the Church, the vampires all went to their respective forms of transportation. I watched the girl Sookie walking with William Compton, his arm around her shoulders, a male human trailing behind them. It hit me then why I thought Sookie's last name was familiar to me: the man following them was Jason Stackhouse, her brother – the one who had shot Steve Newlin with the paint gun, and who had been a member of the Fellowship for a while, and Steve's favourite pupil. It seemed that relationship hadn't ended very well.

And walking quickly ahead of everyone else was Isabel, a still unconscious Hugo in her arms. Looking at them, I felt very sad for Isabel.

Eric stood behind me silently, waiting for me to do something, say something.

"You care for the girl, don't you?" I asked, referring to Sookie.

He shifted a little but said nothing.

"Be careful, my Child. There are some things you shouldn't meddle in, and William Compton and Sookie Stackhouse may be one of them."

Eric put his hand on my arm, and my arm felt hot and I flinched away.

"Sorry," he murmured as he dropped his hand, but he sounded more hurt than apologetic. "My car is over there." He pointed out a sleek-looking black Corvette, sitting by itself under a tree at the far end of the parking lot.

I chuckled a little looking at the car. "You would, wouldn't you?"

I slid into the passenger seat. The car smelled strongly of new leather and cleaning products, and the scent of pine came from the little Christmas tree-shaped air freshener hanging from the mirror.

Eric got into the driver's seat. "The one I have at home is red," he said, and started the engine.

* * *

We were on the highway, about halfway to my house, when Eric pulled the car off the road and cut the engine.

"Why did you do it?" he whispered as he stared at his fingers, ghostly in the moonlight, clutching the steering wheel.

I had been waiting for this since he had come to 'rescue' me, and I still had no adequate answer.

Eric turned to face me, his blue eyes large and burning. "Why didn't you escape? Why didn't you kill them all when they captured you?"

"They didn't capture me," I said softly. "I went to them."

Silence. Then: "Why?"

"I can't say."

"Explain it to me."

"You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

"You won't."

"Well, of course I won't understand," he said between clenched teeth, "if you won't tell me." His fingers tightened, and there a sharp noise as a crack appeared at the top of the steering wheel. "Goddamn it," he hissed.

"Eric, just drive the car."

He started the ignition and turned the car back onto the highway, the tires squealing as he sped off.

We said nothing else the rest of the way home.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-One**

When Eric and I arrived at my house, there was a milling crowd of humans and vampires quietly conversing. It was a vast assortment of creatures, most from my own den, but quite a number from the Fellowship of the Sun, including William Compton. I saw in this latter group a few of the humans who I had granted a stay of execution, who now understood that not all vampires were as bloodthirsty and depraved as Steve Newlin painted us to be.

As I walked through the crowd, a hush descended over them and followed me into the den, where Stan and Isabel stood waiting for me.

I took the chair that sat empty, and as settled Stan came and said to me, "Welcome home, sheriff. We are all very relieved."

If I had been in a different mood, or if it had been another night but tonight, his insincerity would have disgusted and offended me, but tonight I didn't care. Stan's ardour for power and status was endless, and as much a part of him as his fangs and bloodlust. That was why he would never become sheriff: he wanted it too much.

I turned my attention to the line of humans and vampires that was growing behind Stan. First in line was Jason Stackhouse.

"Uh, I just wanna say, I'm real sorry for what the Fellowship put you through." Everything about Jason was uncomfortable. His shy speech, his stance, with hands in the pockets to stop them from fluttering nervously. He turned away after speaking, sure I had nothing to say to him. But I had much to say to him.

"You saved many lives today, Mr. Stackhouse. Please know that you have friends in this area whenever you visit."

"Thanks, man," Jason replied with a lopsided smile, "but, uh, I don't know if I'll be wanting to come back anytime soon."

I couldn't blame the man for his sentiment. It was the most truthful thing anyone had said to me the entire night.

A few others came forth to welcome me back, but I hardly heard them. I gave them automatic answers which they seemed content with, wishing that each being was the last one.

Whispers broke out at the back of the line, then Isabel pushed her way through the congregation, Hugo with her.

"Here is the one who betrayed us." She pushed Hugo forward, and he stumbled and fell to his knees. I locked eyes with Isabel, and I could see how much this was hurting her, but also an iron determination to do whatever was best for the nest.

Though I knew the answer, I inquired, "Hugo...he is your human, is he not?"

"Yes, he is."

"Do you love him?"

Determination wavered, and her voice cracked only just a little. "I-I thought I did."

"It appears you love him still."

Unconsciously, her gaze flickered to the man grovelling before me on the floor. Her face crumpled. "I do. I'm sorry. But you are my sheriff. Do with him as you please." She tensed her spine in preparation for the blow that I was to deliver.

To the traitor I said, "You are free to go." For in this world, love, even between a loyalist and a traitor, was far too rare to take away. I couldn't break Isabel's heart.

"What?"

I turned to Stan, the begetter of the outcry. "The human is free to go..." _ And don't you dare try to make it otherwise. _"...and do not return," I added to Hugo. "I fear it is not safe for you here."

"This is a travesty."

"This is my verdict, Stan. Eric, escort Hugo and Isabel out. Make sure he leaves unharmed."

Eric sketched a hint of a bow. "Yes, Godric."

As Hugo, Eric, and Isabel left, a sudden exhaustion overcame me. I didn't want to see anyone else tonight, or talk anymore, or sit around to be looked at and whispered about. I wanted to be alone, away from prying eyes.

Eric returned quickly, and a twitch of his head cleared everyone else out of the den. As soon as they were gone, he came and knelt next to me.

"Hugo's been dispatched. I told him not to stop driving until he reaches the Mexican border." His blue eyes looked like winter moonlight playing upon an icy Nordic sea. He smiled hopefully at me. "I arranged for an AB-negative human for you. Extremely rare."

I sighed. "Thank you, but I'm not hungry."

"You have to feed eventually. I doubt the Fellowship had anything to offer." I saw in his face this need to be hopeful, to pretend that what happened in the car never happened, that things would be all right and I would revert back to my normal self. But when I said nothing to him, his hope quickly vanished, leaving only desperation and fear in its place. And despair. "Why won't you talk to me? Why didn't you leave when I first came for you?"

"I told you, they didn't hold me against my will. And they didn't treat me badly. You'd be shocked at how ordinary most of them are. Steve was the only rabid one, truly."

"They do nothing but fan the flames of hatred for us."

"Let's be honest," I admonished, "we are frightening. After thousands of years, we haven't evolved. I tried, and look what it got me: disbelief and disdain, from vampires and humans alike. And I understand why ‒ we have only grown more brutal, more predatory, more selfish. I don't see the danger in treating humans as equals. The Fellowship of the Sun arose because we never did so, and I fear it will soon be too late to ever reach a peace between vampires and humans if we keep on as we have kept on."

"Is that why you wouldn't fight?"

"That is only part of the reason... I could have killed every last one of them within minutes. And what would that have proven? Only that we are iniquitous beasts who deserve to be put down."

"But why were you willing to kill‒"

Before he could finish that laden question, a commotion broke out in the outer room. It sounded like some sort of fight between Sookie Stackhouse and another woman about William Compton. I went to find out, and was confronted with the sight of a female vampire holding Sookie down, her fangs out and prepared to strike, and William standing uselessly nearby.

After all my effort to make amends to humans for the wrongs vampires have done them, to see a vampire abusing a human so lightly infuriated me. I snatched the female vampire off of Sookie before she could harm the girl. "Retract...your...fangs. Now."

The vampire's fangs slid back, and she stared at me with caution in her eyes. It seemed she wasn't used to being handled as a puppet by someone so much older than her.

"I neither know–nor care–who you are," I said to her. "But in this area, and certainly in this nest, I am the authority. Do you understand?

Carefully, she answered. "Yes, sheriff."

"Sookie has proven to be a courageous and loyal friend to our kind. And yet you treat her like a child does a dragonfly: pulling off wings for sport. No wonder they hate us."

"She provoked me."

My hand tightened on her throat. "And you have provoked me. You disrupted the peace in my own home. I could snap you like a twig, and yet I haven't. Why is that?"

She swallowed deeply, her throat moving against my palm. "It's your choice."

"Indeed it is. You're an old vampire, I can tell. You've had hundreds of years to better yourself, yet you are still a savage." I became aware that I had an audience. There wasn't a person in the vicinity who wasn't watching with rapt attention. "I fear for us all, humans and vampires, if this behaviour persists."

I looked to William, who had remained very still during the course of events. "You. You seem to know her."

"Yes, sheriff."

"Escort her from the nest." To the female I warned, "I wish you out of my area before dawn."

William took her quickly away, and seemed embarrassed to be associated with her. A child, ashamed of his Maker. I had realized what she was to him, and felt pity for William to have such a Maker as she.

My own child was coming to me again, with his face set in grim determination, and I knew what he was determined to do. However, before he reached me, a male human walked into the centre of the room, and calling notice to himself.

"Excuse me, everyone. If I could have your attention. My name is Luke McDonald. I'm a member of The Fellowship of the Sun, and I have a message for you all, from Reverend Steve Newlin."

Curious, I progressed toward the boy, when he unzipped his jacket. Underneath, he had a bomb harnessed to his body, bound by objects of silver.

I looked at Eric but I could not say anything, for the bomb exploded.


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

I wandered around in a daze, my ears ringing, my eyes trying to reconcile the carnage that was splattered across my home. Blood dripped down the now smoke-blackened walls in running rivulets, and there were loud, wet noises as viscera detached from the wall and hit the floor. People were strewn about the room, some stirring to consciousness, moans escaping their mouths as their pain crashed down upon them; a few deathly still.

William Comptom was one of the first to his feet. Panic emanated from him as he searched for Sookie, dreading that her body was one of the bodies that had been ripped apart and splashed across the room like some macabre painting.

"Sookie!"

Isabel was also struggling to get up, her face dirtied with ash and a cut across her forehead. She saw me and gave me a terse nod, then went about helping those who could stand get to their feet.

I looked down. There was a body at my feet, its left leg gone and with no signs of life remaining. I crouched down and turned it over onto its back. It was a young girl. She couldn't have been more than twenty-five. There was a small silver cross pooled in the hollow of her throat, and I recognized her as one who had come from the Fellowship of the Sun. She had come, willing to learn more, to understand more, and it had cost her her life. I felt anger then, and a deep, unsettled regret. I turned away from her and searched for a familiar head of blonde hair, and saw Eric across the room, lying eerily still. But he wasn't dead, or I would've felt that loss within me.

Someone was pressed beneath him and just now awakening. Eric shifted, and Sookie emerged, looking haggard but no worse for wear. William rushed over as soon as he caught sight of her and looked her over for signs of injury.

"I covered her. She's only stunned," Eric whispered wanly. His body was riddled with shards of silver, and blood slowly leaked down his torso. Then his eyes hardened to ice, and he hissed at William, "Get the humans."

William disappeared preternaturally fast, and then Isabel was at my side. Her shoulders were slumped, and her face was lined with worry and exhaustion.

"Who's dead?" I asked.

"Stan, Paolo, Catherine. Two human companions, and three unknown humans. And many more injured. I phoned the Hotel Carmilla."

So much death and pain. This was the type of reaction that vampires invoked. This level of hatred and violence. It was the response to the millennia of cruelty and violence vampires had directed–and continued to direct–toward humans.

Isabel tried to address the humans and vampires who remained, but her voice was too weak. Jason Stackhouse stepped in to assist. "Hey! Y'all listen up!" He gave me thin-lipped smile.

"They may come back," I said. "Go to the Hotel Carmilla. Isabel has alerted them; security is in place."

Immediately everyone filed out. Some needed help to walk, but slowly the house emptied until it was only me, the charred, ruined room, and Eric.

"I see you have healed," I mentioned, glancing at his smooth chest. "With a little help from Miss Stackhouse, I may presume?"

He didn't answer, but he didn't need to.

"I have warned you, Eric, and I will warn you once more: be careful there."

Eric took car keys from his pocket and showed them to me. I sighed and nodded. "But please, let's not talk this time, Eric. Please."

* * *

As I had expected, but had hoped wouldn't be so, Nan Flanagan was waiting for us at the Hotel Carmilla, that sour sneer out in full force. Without saying a word, she stalked off, expecting us to follow her.

"Do you have any fucking idea of the PR mess you've made?" she yelled as soon as we were behind closed doors. "And who has to fucking clean that shit up? Me. Not you, me. I should drain every last one of you bastards."

We were in a hotel room, quite large and comfortable. The walls were slate grey, making the white lounge chairs and couch seem nearly luminescent in contrast. The carpet underfoot was black and soft. There were seven of us in the room: Nan, her two guards, Sookie, Bill, Isabel, and myself. We arranged ourselves on the furniture, and waited to hear the Authority's judgment.

"Stan went to the Church on his own. None of us knew anything about it," Eric said to Nan, who only laughed.

"Oh really? Because everyone who's met Stan in the last 300 years knew that he had a kink about slaughtering humans, but you, his nest mates, his sheriff, had no clue."

Isabel shifted on the couch, her fingernails making grooves in the leather. "And how were we supposed to know that this time he meant it?"

"Not my problem." Nan looked very pointedly at me. "Yours."

"Don't talk to him that way."

I had been trying very hard not to look at Eric ever since we left my house. Every time I did, he would stare at me, silently imploring me to talk to him, to tell him what was going on. I wasn't ready for that yet, and the looks were becoming too much, so I tried to ignore him. But the tone of his voice now, pregnant with promised threat, drew my eyes. Threatening the Authority was never a good idea. I wanted to tell him to stop, but he was focused only on Nan.

Nan leered at him haughtily. "Don't talk to me that way. Let's get to the point. How'd they manage to abduct you?" The last was for me.

I told her what I had rehearsed in my head. It was short, utterly truthful, but leaving out the parts that didn't need to be said. At least, not to her. "They would've taken one of us sooner or later. I offered myself."

"Why?" Genuine confusion. It was not something she seemed comfortable with.

"Why not?"

"They wanted you to meet the sun, and you were willing?"

"What do you think?" I judged her uncaring enough not to argue with me about specifics. She would form her own convenient story.

I was correct. "I think you're out of your mind," she chuckled, then instantly reverted back to her stern self. "And then I hear about a traitor?"

Isabel flinched next to me. The poor girl. Hugo's treachery would never be forgotten, and I had no desire to exacerbate it. Isabel had suffered for it already, and would continue to do so with or without the Authority's say-so. "Irrelevant," I answered Nan. "Only a rumour. I'll take full responsibility."

"You bet you will."

Isabel's hand quickly snatched out and touched mine, a silent expression of thanks. A smile crept to my lips, but it disappeared with Isabel's hand, before Nan could see.

"This is a national vampire disaster," Nan continued, determined to make sure we all understood how much trouble we had caused for her. "Nobody at the top has any sympathy for any of you. Sheriff, you fucked up. You're fired."

I had expected this. It didn't come as a shock. "I agree. Of course. Isabel should take over, she had no part in my disgrace." I tapped Isabel's shoulder; her mouth had dropped open in bewilderment.

"Godric, fight back," she urged.

Eric yelled at me, waving emphatically with his large hands. "What are you saying? Sh-sh-she's a bureaucrat, you don't have to take shit from her!"

"You want to lose your area, Viking?"

"Oh, you don't have that kind of power, Nan."

"Hey, I'm on TV. Try me."

"I'm to blame," Isabel chimed in. "I should've contained Stan the _second_ Godric went missing."

"Isabel." The arguments fell silent. I said to Nan, "I remove myself from all positions of authority."

"Works for me."

On the couch opposite Sookie was rustling deliberately, drawing Nan Flanagan's attention to herself. "Miss Flanagan, Godric rescued me from a _really_ large rapist, who probably would've killed me too."

Nan hardly even heard what Sookie said. "That's nice."

"No, listen–"

"Moving on."

"And then he rescued humans in that Church, plus a whole lot of vampires. You think it's a PR mess now? It could've been a hundred, a million times worse."

Hearing Sookie's speech, I had hope. Hope that maybe humans and vampires could work things out, that we could co-exist in peace; that we could forgive past wrongs, and look to a brighter future.

Obviously, Nan felt no such sentiment. "For getting kidnapped? For attracting a suicide bomber? For piss-poor judgment? I think not!"

Eric leapt from his chair, flinging it backwards across the room, a growl building in his chest. His eyes looked fit to freeze Nan where she sat. He nearly lunged for her, but Isabel got in his way and grabbed his arm.

"Don't!"

"Eric." The hairs on the nape of my neck stood up when Eric fixed his eyes on me, the growl slowly and unwillingly fading. I hadn't seen such pure, untainted rage in him in a very long time; his anger was almost never without sadness corrupting it. I turned away from that rage. "It doesn't matter."

He started, almost as if I'd spooked him.

Nan was talking again; asking questions again. "Tell me about the bombing, please. Every single detail."

I acquiesced. "A boy walked in the lair. I thought he was someone's human companion."


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty-Three:**

"What a fucking fiasco," was all Nan could say when we had finished telling her the story. I say 'we', because although I did most of the talking, Sookie, Bill, and Isabel all supplied details and information. Eric remained noticeably silent throughout. "You're lucky I don't send you all to the Magister. Godric, some to my suite and fill out the forms."

"Soon. First, I have something to say." I met my child's solemn gaze, the gaze he had bound to me when I had begun explaining to Nan about the bombing. Sookie had noticed this, too. She kept watching him as he watched me, and she understood that something more was happening. She felt the tension, which was so thick it was brushing our skin with its icy claws.

I met that gaze with equal gravity. An idea had been forming in my mind as we discussed the night's events, and with each passing minute I was more and more accepting of the path lying before me. Now...now it was time for me to make amends. "I'm sorry." It is strange how such a small word can carry so much weight and cause so much commotion, so much happiness, so much hurt. "I apologize for all the harm I've caused, for all our lost ones, human and vampire. I will rectify things. I swear it."

Sookie studied Eric, soundlessly searching. No one else but her seemed to notice the changes in Eric, the now lowering gaze, the heavy swallowing, the bowed back. He was pulling in on himself, and she saw and realized. I could see now why Eric was intrigued by her. She was intelligent, brave, and sympathetic. She was what he needed.

"Take it easy, it's just a few signatures," declared Nan, breaking the loaded silence and clapping me on the shoulder. "I'll be in my suite. Don't take too long."

Then she was gone, and everyone followed after her. Sookie lingered, though William had put an arm around her shoulder and was attempting to escort her away. I went to follow Nan as well, but Eric intercepted me; and I could see in his face that he realized what I intended to do – and it was hurting him inside.

He stooped down and laid his forehead against my own. "No." And that one word said so much.

I turned up to him. I could feel his breath on my skin, cool, carrying the scent of fresh-fallen snow. "Look in my heart."

"You have to listen to me."

"There is nothing to say."

"There is." And I could tell he wasn't going to let it go this time, not like in the car. He sensed that something was happening, that there wouldn't been another time to talk. I could feel his need within me, through our bond; and I couldn't say no to it.

I nodded. "On the roof."

* * *

Eric was a quivering mass of confusion and emotion as he shadowed me up the stairs to the roof of the Hotel Carmilla. Sunrise was not far off. There was a sliver of blackish-pink on the eastern horizon, and soon that sliver would grow wider and wider, until the edges of the sun's burning rays would rise up.

He was waiting for me to speak first, to confess and explain. I didn't know how to start.

"Tell me why," Eric demanded when he saw I wouldn't speak. "Tell me why you wanted to let yourself burn at the Fellowship of the Sun. Why you gave yourself up to them. Why do you want to die?"

"It's complicated."

"Don't fucking give me 'complicated', Godric. You tell me, and you tell me now!"

"It's punishment."

Eric pulled back, his brow knitted in wondering grooves. "Punishment? What for?"

"For everything, Eric. Everything I've ever done, and everything I will ever do."

"Godric– "

"I never told you about my Maker, did I?"

Eric paused, then shook his head. "Only little things here and there. If I ever asked, you refused to talk about him."

"I hated him," I hissed. "When he made me, he raised me to see humans not as equals, but as cattle, as sport, much as I raised you. But it was more than that. He made me afraid to care about anything, because if I did, I instantly regretted it. He moulded the psychopath I was when I met you. I killed him, you know." Eric let the hand that had been clutching my arm slip, but I reached out and caught it, holding it in my own. It felt strange to hold that hand once again after so long, but it also felt right. "But one day, things just suddenly changed, and I didn't want to be like him anymore. I couldn't do it anymore, all the killing, the torment. And I didn't want you to do it, either; I didn't want _any_ vampire to do it. So I've spent decades trying to atone for my past, but I've done too much – _we've_ done too much, as a species. There's no way to atone for the things we've done. Well, only one way."

"You were never like him, Godric. You taught me what I needed to learn to survive, that was all."

"Was it really? I can remember breaking a few of your toys, wanting to hurt you simply because I could. And now _you_ break things just because _you_ can."

"It doesn't matter, you know. And I didn't really want them; I only needed you."

"Yes. You did love me, as I could never love mine own Maker."

"But you love _me_."

I nodded. "It isn't enough, though. Not anymore. There has to be more."

"Don't say that. Just stay with me."

I released his hand and turned away from him. "You are very different in some ways, my child. You're more calculating, more cynical, more cautious. But in some ways you are the same."

"How so?"

I smiled a mournful smile. "You still don't want to let me go. But you have to let me go."

"No."

"Yes, Eric. It is time. Two thousand years is enough, and I don't want to do this anymore."

"No." The anger came back, and he came at me then, his whole frame tight with grim, fierce determination. "I can't accept this. It's insanity!"

"Our existence is insanity. We don't belong here. No creature that has done as I've done belongs here."

"But we _are_ here."

"It's not right. _We're _not right."

"You taught me once, long ago, that there was no right or wrong," Eric insisted as he paced forward. "Only survival...or death."

And that was the lesson I had most regretted teaching him, for it was the hardest lesson for a predator to unlearn. I could still remember the moment I forced him to swallow that caveat: the ocean waves crashing around us, Eric on his knees before me, his hands on my face, tears running down my cheeks. Our first goodbye. "I told a lie, as it turns out."

"How could you have changed so much?" he whispered, almost to himself.

I stared off at the slowly widening band of light on the horizon. There wasn't much time now. "I opened my eyes to the world around me, Eric. I saw that there was more to life than basic survival, than carnal pleasures. Despite everything I had been taught and had taught to you, I began to see beauty, and happiness, and love; and I saw how vampires are determined to destroy all that for their gluttony. How _I_ was determined to destroy it all. And I can't stand the thought." My hands curled into fists, nails biting my palms. "So I wanted to try and fix things, to show vampires that there can be more, and to show humans that we do regret the things we've done... And I want to escape what _I've_ done."

"This is not the way to do it, Godric. It cannot be! I won't allow it." His mouth was a tight line, and hot energy fumed around him, abrasive and overwhelming. The pale light in the sky had painted him in shades of silver, and he looked so very inhuman. Never before had he looked so beautiful. "I will keep you alive by force!"

And he would try. There was no reluctance; he accepted the decision. But it was not what I wanted. "Even if you could, why would you be so cruel?"

A resounding hush.

He broke. His face crumpled, his body shivered, and he reached out. Not physically, but as if he were trying to put invisible hooks in me, to anchor me to earth, to him. I shook them off, and blood rimmed his eyes, making the blue irises more striking. And he spoke, his voice thick and gurgling, in Swedish – the language of our past, of a time before all this happened. "_Godric, don't do it."_

_ "There are centuries of faith and love between us_," I responded in kind. "_I know I have asked much from you during our time together, but for the love you bear me, grant me this last wish."_

The tears seeped down and tracked great red runnels on his cheeks. His chest collapsed as all the breath went out of him in a desperate, silent sob. _"Please, please!"_ He fell to his knees, so slow it was as if time itself were preparing to stop. "_Please, Godric!"_

There were no illusions now. No guises to hide the truth, no icy veneer to protect the warm centre. The bent head hid nothing. Eric was entirely naked before me, his heart bare to me, beating, bloody, tender. The armour he had forged over a thousand years was cast aside, exposing himself in the wild hope that I would change my mind. I wanted to. I loved him, and couldn't bear to hurt him. But there had to be more than love, and I had ruined everything else.

I touched his cheek with a cold finger. "_Father...brother...child..."_ Eric lifted his eyes up to mine. It was the only time I was ever taller than him, when he was on his knees. _"The night I turned you, I said those words to you. Do you remember?"_ He nodded. _"That will never change. I will always be your father, your brother, and your son, as you will always be mine. But you must let me go."_ He was trembling. "Let me go."

The crying faltered, and Eric inhaled deeply, striving to recover some of his steely demeanor; though the effect was somewhat ruined by the tears still creeping from his eyes. He said in a steady voice, "I won't let you die alone."

"Yes, you will." I lifted my hand from his cheek, to stroke his silken hair. Another sob escaped him, and I crouched down in front of him and lightly touched my lips to his forehead. He wasn't meant for death yet. There was still so much more he needed to; so I did the only thing I could to stop Eric from following me. "As your Maker, I command you."

Eric stared at me a long time, stricken, then numb; and then he crawled unsteadily to his feet. My hand slipped from his hair, and he walked away awkwardly. He didn't want to go, but he had to. My last command, one he couldn't disobey – to let me go, and save himself.

Sookie stood by the stairwell, her manner curious and sombre. The way she studied Eric, I knew she had never seen him as she had tonight; and she wanted to see him like this, to memorize it, as if afraid she would never see this part of Eric again. Maybe she wouldn't. And seeing her, how she watched him, understood him, I felt that hope bloom once more. She was the beginning of the change. If she could care about Eric despite everything he was, there was hope for humans and vampires.

When Eric reached her, she put her hand on his arm and turned him to her. "I'll stay with him. As long as it takes." Eric said nothing, just gave me one last, heart-wrenching look...

_Please don't do this. Please don't leave me. _

...and then he was gone.

Sookie came to me, fragile and human. She was silent, waiting for me to speak.

"It won't take long. Not at my age," I said, turning toward the eastern sky. I could almost see the sun now, lapping at the horizon; and I was excited. I hadn't seen the sun in two thousand years.

"You know, it wasn't very smart. The Fellowship of the Sun part."

"I know." I could feel warmth beginning to dance on my skin. My heart was pounding in my chest. "I thought it would...fix everything somehow. But I don't think like a vampire anymore." Some dreadful curiosity grabbed hold of me, and I turned to look at Sookie. "Do you believe in God?"

"Yes," she answered without hesitation.

"If you're right, how will he punish me?"

"God doesn't punish." She was shaking her head. "God forgives."

The implication astounded me. That there might be someone, some eternal being, who instead of choosing hate, chose love and forgiveness. But could he forgive me my sins? Or was there a limit as to how much hatred a person could infect into the world before forgiveness was no longer an option? I had never much considered the afterlife, but now, so near the end, I wondered what was waiting for me.

"I don't deserve forgiveness, but I hope for it."

She gave me a shaky smile. "We all do."

I moved away from her and closer to the rising sun. "You will care for him?" I said to Sookie. "Eric."

"I'm not sure. You know how he is."

I had to laugh. "I can take the blame for that too." I did indeed know how he was. Although, I wondered how he would be from now on.

"Maybe not. Eric's pretty much himself."

The first golden rays of the sun crested the horizon, and my skin felt hot. Smoke smouldered from my skin, blurring the edges of me.

Behind me, Sookie asked in a soft voice, "Are you very afraid?"

"No." I smiled, astonished. "No. I am full of joy." And I was. After everything I had done, all the years of regret I'd lived, I was finally at the end. Everything was finished.

"But the pain..."

"I want to burn."

"I-I'm afraid for you." There were tears in her voice, and I turned to see tears in her eyes, too. She was crying for me. Tears, for a monster. I had received forgiveness; and I was euphoric. "A human with me at the end, and human tears. Two thousand years, and I can still be surprised. In this I see God."

I lifted my hands to unbutton my shirt, my skin scalding, the smoke thickening. It was excruciating, but it was a good pain. A pain that signified no more pain. My shirt fluttered to the concrete floor. Flashes of people appeared before my eyes, people long dead, and those still alive: my mother, my father, my Maker, Gabrielle, Damien, Sookie, William, Jason, Isabel, the _god_, Stan, Nan...and Eric. All of them looked at me, some with hope, some with confusion, and some with sadness. They all looked at me, and I looked at them, until the heat became too much and I had to close my eyes.

The sun rose over the tall buildings of Dallas, and I burst into flames. I could not scream from the pain – I was too happy to scream. My arms spread wide to welcome the sun into me.

I hadn't realized Sookie was still there, until she whispered, "Goodbye, Godric."

_Goodbye, Eric._

I saw the sun as I hadn't seen it in two thousand years. A fat, golden orb that chased away the last recesses of the night. It was stunning, more beautiful than I could possibly have ever remembered, and–.

**The End**

* * *

**Yes, this truly is the end. I would like to thank everyone who's read this story, but especially the readers who waited two years for twenty-three chapters. I'm sorry it took so long. I hope you have enjoyed the story almost as much as I enjoyed writing it. And please feel free to leave comments or send me messages :)


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